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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 






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THE NEW 


CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA 

AND 


TREASURY OF KNOWLEDGE. 









THE NEW 

i 

CABINET CYCLOPEDIA 

AND 

TREASURY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

A HANDY BOOK OF REFERENCE ON ALE SUBJECTS 

AND FOR ALL READERS. 


WITH ABOUT TWO THOUSAND PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS, 
A COMPLETE ATLAS OF SIXTY-FOUR COLORED MAPS, 
AND ONE HUNDRED MAPS IN THE TEXT. 

EDITED BY 

CHARLES ANN AND ALE, M.A., LL.D., 

EDITOR OF THE “IMPERIAL DICTIONARY,” ETC. 

THE ARTICLES RELATING TO AMERICA REVISED AND EDITED BY 

AINSWORTH R. SPOFFORD, Librarian of Congress, 

AND EDITOR OF THE “LIBRARY OF CHOICE LITERATURE.” 


VOL. I. 


Gilf- ^ 

IV-A) 31 1393 



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PHILADELPHIA: 
GEBBIE & CO., PUBLISHERS 
1893. 





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19 f 3 


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Copyrighted, 1891 and 1893, by Gebbie & Co. 




PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE. 


On the publication of the census of the United States for 1890 and the 
statistics of Imports and Exports, Manufactures, Railways and other Indus¬ 
tries included in the same, it has been deemed a fitting time to present for 
public patronage a New Cyclopaedia. The model on which it is compiled is 
that of The Conversations-Lexicon of the Germans, from which great work 
all that is best and most recent is abridged. 

The New Cabinet Cyclopedia occupies a place unique among works of 
its kind by supplying, what has long been wanted, a means of getting rapidly 
at central and vital facts, carefully sifted from unessential details, in all depart¬ 
ments of knowledge. It is thus well adapted for the use of busy people, and 
especially for teachers and students. 

It is convenient to consult, with volumes so easily handled, and limited in 
number, that the whole work may be kept, if desired, lying within reach upon 
desk or table. 

A glance at the colored maps will indicate the key-note of our intent. They 
are small, neat, concise and thorough —indeed, all that is necessary for satis¬ 
factory reference—and so it is through all the range of the compilation of Uni¬ 
versal Knowledge included in this work, and the fact that it is edited by two of 
the most correct and painstaking Cyclopaedia authorities in Europe and Amer¬ 
ica is a guarantee of its standard excellence. 

In treating of the American and Mexican Census of 1890, the editors include 
all towns with a population of 5000 or upwards. 

The statistics of Populations, Imports and Exports, Manufactures, Railways, 
Important Industries, Finance and Public Debts of all the Nations of both 
Hemispheres have been carefully compared with the latest official state papers 
issued up to 1893. 



LIST OF COLORED MAPS. 


Volume I. 

Afghanistan and Baluchistan . Page 47 

Africa. “ 49 

u Central.. . 14 50 

“ South .. . “ 52 

America, North. ‘ 130 

“ South. 132 

Arabia .... 203 

Asia. “ 262 

Australia .. “ 309 

Austro-Hungarian Monarchy ..“ 313 

Belgium. 44 441 

Berlin and Potsdam. 4 ' 


467 















KEY TO THE PRONUNCIATION, 


The pronunciation of the words that form the titles of the articles is indicated in two 
ways: 1st, By re-writing the word in a different form and according to a simple system of 
transliteration. 2d, By marking the syllable on which the chief accent falls. Entries which 
simply have their accentuation marked are English or foreign words that present little 
difficulty, and in regard to which readers can hardly go far wrong. A great many of the 
entries, however, cannot be treated in this way, but must have their pronunciation repre¬ 
sented by a uniform series of symbols, so that it shall be unmistakable. In doing this the 
same letter or combination of letters is made use of to represent the same sound, no matter 
by what letter or letters the sound may be represented in the word whose pronunciation 
is shown. The key to the pronunciation by this means is greatly simplified, the reader 
having only to remember one character for each sound. Sounds and letters, it may be 
remarked, are often very different things. In the English language there are over forty 
sounds, while in the English alphabet there are only twenty-six letters to represent them. 
Our alphabet is, therefore, very far from being adequate to the duties required of it, and 
still more inadequate to represent the various sounds of foreign languages. 

The most typical vowel sounds (including diphthongs) are as shown in the following list, 
which gives also the characters that are used in the Cyclopedia to show their pronunciation, 
most of these being distinguished by diacritical marks. 


a, as in fate, or in bare, 
a, as in alms, Fr. dme, Ger. B«hn=£ of 
Indian names. 

a, the same sound short or medium, as in 
Fr. bal, Ger. Mann, 
a, as in fat. 
a, as in fall. 

a, obscure, as in rural, similar to u in bat, 
e in her: common in Indian names, 
e, as in me = i in machine, 
e, as in met. 
e, as in her. 

I, as in pine, or as ei in Ger. mein, 
i, as in pin, also used for the short sound 
corresponding to e, as in French and 
Italian words. 


eu, a long sound as in Fr. ieane, = Ger. long 
6, as in Sobne, Gi/the (Goethe), 
eu, corresponding sound short or medium, 
as in Fr. pea = Ger. 6 short. 

5, as in note, moan. 

o, as in not, soft—that is, short or medium, 
o, as in move, two. 
u, as in tabe. 

u, as in tab: similar to e and also to a. 
u, as in ball. 

u, as in Sc. abane=Fr. it as in d$, Ger. it 
long as in gran, Bwhne. 
u, the corresponding short or medium 
sound, as in Fr. bat, Ger. Mailer, 
oi, as in oil. 

ou, as in poand; or as au in Ger. Haas. 


Of the consonants , b, d, f, h, j, k, 1, m, n, ng, p, sh, t, v, z, always have their common 
English sounds, when used to transliterate foreign words. The letter c is not used by itself 
in re-writing for pronunciation, s or k being respectively used instead. The only conson¬ 
antal symbols, therefore, that require explanation are the following:— 

ch is always as in rich. 

d, nearly as th in £/ds=Sp. d in Madrid, &o. 
g is always hard, as in go. 

h represents the guttural in Scotch lo ch, Ger. 

nac/q also other similar gutturals, 
n, Fr. nasal n as in boa. 

r represents both English r, and r in foreign words, 
which is generally much more strongly trilled. 


s, always as in so. 
th, as th in tin n. 
th, as th in this. 

w always consonantal, as in we. 
x = ks, which are used instead, 
y always consonantal, as in ?/ea (Fr. 

ligne would be re-written leny). 
zh, as s in pleasure = Fr. j. 





















8 j ' M 9 I 

































- 






























THE NEW 

CABINET CYCLOPEDIA. 


VOL. I. 


A, the first letter in almost all alphabets. 
Most modern languages, as French, Italian, 
German, have only one sound for a , namely, 
the sound which is heard in father pro¬ 
nounced short or long; in English this letter 
is made to represent seven sounds, as in the 
words father, mat , mate, mare, many, ball, 
tvhat, besides being used in such digraphs as 
ca in heat, oa in boat. —A, in music, is the 
sixth note in the diatonic scale of C, and 
stands when in perfect tune to the latter 
note in the ratio of -§■ to 1. The second 
string of the violin is tuned to this note. 

A 1 , a symbol attached to vessels of the 
highest class in Lloyd’s register of shipping, 
A referring to the hull of the vessel, while 1 
intimates the sufficiency of the rigging and 
whole equipment. Iron vessels are classed 
A 1 with a numeral prefixed, as 100 A1, 90 
A 1, the numeral denoting that they are 
built respectively according to certain speci¬ 
fications. 

Aa (a) (from Old German aha; allied to 
Latin aqua, water), the name of a great many 
streams of central and northern Europe. 

Aachen (a'Aen). See Aix-la-Chapelle. 

Aalborg (ol'borA; ‘ eel-town ’), a seaport of 
Denmark, on the Liimfiord, see of a bishop, 
with a considerable trade, ship-building, 
fishing, &c. Pop. 1890, 19,503. 

Aalen (a'len), a town of Germany in Wiir- 
temberg, has manufactures of woollens, rail¬ 
way works, &c., with ironworks in the neigh¬ 
bourhood. Pop. 6659. 

Aalst (alst). See Alost. 

Aar (ar), the name of several European 
rivers, of which the chief (160 miles long) 
is a tributary of the Rhine, next to it and 
the Rhone the longest river in Switzerland. 
It has its origin from the upper and lower 
glaciers of the Aar in the Bernese Alps. On 
it are Interlaken, Thun, Bern, Solothurn, 
and Aarau, to which, as to the canton of 
Aargau, it gives its name. 

Aarau (a'rou), a well-built and finely 
VOL. i. 1 


situated town in Switzerland, capital of can¬ 
ton Aargau, on the river Aar. Pop. 5914. 

Aard-vark (ard'vark : earth-pig), a bur¬ 
rowing insectivorous animal of South Africa, 
OrycterGpus capensis, order Edentata, having 



Aard-vark (Orycteropus capensis). 


affinities with the ant-eaters and armadillos. 
Called also ground-hog and Cape pig. 

Aardwolf (ard'wulf: earth-wolf) (Protelcs 
cristatus), a carnivorous burrowing animal 
of South Africa, allied to the hyenas and 
civets. Feeds on carrion, small mammals, 
insects, &c. 

Aargau (ar'gou), or Argovie (ar-go-ve), a 
northern canton of Switzerland; area, 543 
square miles; hilly, well wooded, abundantly 
watered by the Aar and its tributaries, and 
well cultivated. It formed part of the canton 
Bern till 1798. Pop. 198,266, of whom more 
than half are Protestants. German is almost 
universally spoken. Capital, Aarau. 

Aarhuus (or'hos), a seaport and ancient 
town of Denmark, on the east coast of Jut¬ 
land; has a fine Gothic cathedral, a good 
harbour, considerable trade and manufac¬ 
tures of woollens, gloves, hats, tobacco, &c. 
Pop. 1890, 33,308. 

Aaron ^a'ron), of the tribe of Levi, eldest 
son of Amram and Jochebed, and brother 
and assistant of Moses. At Sinai, when the 
people became impatient at the long-con¬ 
tinued absence of Moses, he complied with 
their request in making a golden calf, and 






AARON’S BEARD-ABATTIS. 


thus became involved with them in the 
guilt of gross idolatry. The office of high- 
priest, which he first filled, was made heredi¬ 
tary in his family. He died at Mount 
Hor at the age of 123, and was succeeded 
by his son Eleazar. 

Aaron’s Beard. See Saint Johns Wort 
and Toad-flax. 

Aaron’s Rod. See Golden-rod and Mul¬ 
lein. 

Aasvar (os'var), a group of small islands 
off the Norwegian coast, under the Arctic 
Circle, where there 
is an important 
December herring- 
fishei-y. 

Ab, the eleventh 
month of the Jew¬ 
ish civil, the fifth of 
the ecclesiastical, 
year—part of July 
and part of Au¬ 
gust. 

Ababdeh (ab- 

ab'de), a nomadic 
African race inha¬ 
biting Upper Egypt 
and part of Nubia, 
between the Nile 
and the Red Sea, 
of Hamitic stock, 
and thus akin in 
race to the ancient 
Egyptians; dark 
brown in colour; 

Mohammedans in 
religion. 

Ab'aca, or Manilla Hemp, a strong fibre 
yielded by the leaf-stalks of a kind of plan¬ 
tain (Musa textilis) which grows in the In¬ 
dian Archipelago, and is cultivated in the 
Philippines. The outer fibres of the leaf¬ 
stalks are made into strong and durable 
ropes, the inner into various fine fabrics. 

Ab'aco, Great and Little, two islands 
of the Bahamas group. 

Ab'acus, a Latin term applied to an ap¬ 
paratus used in elementary schools for facili- 



An Ababdeh Man. 



-OOOOOXK)- 
-oooooo 


ooooooo- 

ooooo- 

ooooooooo- 


-ooooooooo 

- 300 

-ooooo- 

-o 


Abacus for Calculations. 



Doric Capital—a, the 
Abacus. 


tating arithmetical operations, consisting of 
a number of parallel cords or wires, upon 
which balls or beads are strung, the upper¬ 


most wire being appropriated to units, the 
next to tens, &c.—In classic architecture it 
denotes the tablet 
forming the upper 
member of a col¬ 
umn, and supporting 
the entablature. In 
Gothic architecture 
the upper member 
of a column from 
which the arch 
springs. 

Abad'don (Heb. destruction), the name 
given in Rev. ix. 11 as that of the angel of 
the bottomless pit, otherwise called Apol- 
lyon. 

Abakansk', a fortified place in Siberia, 
near the Upper Yenisei, founded by Peter 
the Great in 1707. 

Abalone (ab-a-lo'ne), a name in California 
for a species of ear-shell (Haliotis) that fur¬ 
nishes mother-of-pearl. 

Ab'ana, a river near Damascus. 

Abandonment, a term of marine insur¬ 
ance, employed to designate the case where 
the party insured gives up his whole interest 
in the property to the insurer, and claims as 
for a total loss. 

Ab'ano, a village of North Italy, 5 miles 
from Padua, famous for its mud - baths and 
warm springs. It claims to be the birth¬ 
place of Livy. Pop. 711. 

Ab'ano, Pietro d’, a celebrated Italian 
physician, philosopher, and astrologer, born 
at Abano in 1250, died at Padua in 1316. 
He studied at Padua, went to Constantinople 
to learn Greek, visited Paris and studied 
mathematics and medicine, and ti-avelled in 
England and Scotland. He became pro¬ 
fessor of medicine at Padua, and wrote on 
this subject and on philosophy 

Aba'rim, mountain range of Eastern Pa¬ 
lestine, including Nebo, on which Moses 
died. 

Abatement, in law, has various significa¬ 
tions. Abatement of nuisances is the remedy 
allowed to a person injured by a public or 
private nuisance, of destroying or removing 
it himself. A plea m abatement is brought 
forward by a defendant when he wishes to 
defeat or quash a particular action on some 
formal or technical ground. Abatement, in 
mercantile law, is an allowance, deduction, 
or discount made for prompt payment or 
other reason. 

Ab'attis, Abatis, in military affairs, a 
mass of trees cut down and laid with their 
branches turned towards the enemy in such 

2 























ABATTOIR 

a way as to form a defence for troops sta¬ 
tioned behind them. 

Abattoir (ab-at-wiir'), a French term for 
a slaughter-house, now anglicized since the 
establishment of the celebrated abattoirs 
of Paris, instituted by Napoleon in 1807, 
and brought to completion in 1818. Such 
public slaughter-houses, provided with every 
sort of convenience, kept admirably clean, 
and with a plentiful supply of water, are now 
to be found in many large towns. 

Abauzit, Firmin (a-bo-ze), a French Pro¬ 
testant scholar, born in 1679, died 1767. 
He lived chiefly at Geneva, but visited Eng¬ 
land and was highly esteemed by Newton, 
who considered him not unfit to be judge 
between himself and Leibnitz in the quarrel 
as to the invention of the integral and differ¬ 
ential calculus. He left few writings. 

Abba, a Semitic word equivalent to ‘Fa¬ 
ther,’ which, being applied in the Eastern 
church to monks, superiors of monks, and 
other ecclesiastics, gave rise to the word 
abbot. In the Syriac and Coptic Churches 
it is given to the bishops. 

Abbadie (ab-a-de), Antoine Thomson 
and Arnaud Michel d’, French travellers, 
born in Dublin in 1810 and 1815 respec¬ 
tively. They spent a number of years in 
Abyssinia, and have published works throw¬ 
ing much light on that country; by Arnaud, 
Douze ans dans la Haute-Ethiopie; by An¬ 
toine, Geoddsie d’Ethiopie, &c. 

Abbas I., the Great , shah or king of Persia, 
born in 1557, obtained the throne in 1586, 
at a time when the Turks and hordes of 
Usbek Tartars had made great encroach¬ 
ments on the country. Having defeated 
the Usbeks, recovered the provinces overrun 
by them, and reduced great part of Afghan¬ 
istan, he made war against the Turks, and 
in 1605 defeated them near Bussorah, thus 
getting back all the lost provinces. He 
thus extended his rule beyond Persia proper, 
and at his death in 1628 his dominions 
stretched from the Tigris to the Indus. He 
is looked upon by the Persians as their 
greatest sovereign. 

Abbas Mirza, a Persian prince and sol¬ 
dier, son of the shah Feth Ali, born 1783, 
died 1833; greatly distinguished himself in 
the wars against Russia. 

Abbassides (ab'as-sidz), the name of an 
Arabian dynasty which supplanted the Om- 
miades. It traced its descent from Abbas 
(born 566, died 652), uncle of Mohammed, 
and furnished thirty-seven caliphs to Bag¬ 
dad between 749 and 1258. Harun al Ra- 


-ABBEY. 

shid was a member of this dynasty. See 
Caliphs. 

Abbate (ab-ba'ta), the Italian term cor¬ 
responding to Abbe. 

Abbe (ab-a), the French word for abbot, 
was, before the French revolution, the com¬ 
mon title of all who had studied theology 
either with a view to become ordained clergy¬ 
men, or merely in the hope of obtaining some 
appointment or benefice, to which such 
study was considered a preliminary requisite. 
Many of them had little that was clerical in 
their manners or character. Marked out 
by their special dress, they were seen every¬ 
where—at the court, the ball, the theatre, 
and other places of public resort, and in 
private families, where they acted some¬ 
times as tutors and sometimes as confiden¬ 
tial advisers. Others again adopted the 
literary profession or became teachers in 
the higher educational establishments. 

Abbeoku'ta, a town of West Africa, in 
the Egba country, on the Ogun river, 80 
miles n.n.w. of Lagos, composed of scattered 
and filthy lines of houses built of mud, and 
surrounded by a mud wall 17 or 18 miles in 
circuit. Pop. 100,000 to 150,000. 

Ab'bess, See Abbey and Abbot. 

Abbeville (ab-vel) a town of France, 
dep. Somme, on the river Somme (which is 
here tidal), 108 miles n.n.w. of Paris. It 
has a Gothic church (St. Vulfran) with mag¬ 
nificent west front in the Flamboyant style; 
manufactures of woollens, sail-cloth, chemi¬ 
cals, &c., and considerable trade. Pop. 
18,208. 

Ab'bey, a monastery or religious commu¬ 
nity of the highest class, governed by an 
abbot , assisted generally by a prior, sub-prior, 
and other subordinate functionaries; or, in 
the case of a female community, superin¬ 
tended by an abbess. An abbey invariably 
included a church. A priory differed from 
an abbey only in being scarcely so extensive 
an establishment, and was governed by a 
prior. In the English conventual cathedral 
establishments, as Canterbury, Norwich, 
Ely, &c., the archbishops or bishops held the 
abbot’s place, the immediate governor of the 
monastery being called a prior. Some 
priories sprang originally from the more im¬ 
portant abbeys, and remained under the 
jurisdiction of the abbots; but subsequently 
any real distinction between abbeys and 
priories was lost. The greater abbeys formed 
most complete and extensive establishments, 
including not only the church and other 
buildings devoted to the monastic life and 



ABBIATEGRASSO-ABBOT. 


its daily requirements, such as the refectory 
or eating-room, the dormitories or sleeping- 
rooms, the room for social intercourse, the 
school for novices, the scribes’ cells, library, 
and so on; but also workshops, storehouses, 
mills, cattle and poultry sheds, dwellings for 


artisans, labourers, and other servants, in* 
tirmary, guest-house, &c. Among the most 
famous abbeys on the continent of Europe 
were those of Cluny, Clairvaux, and Citeaux 
in France; St. Galle in Switzerland, and 
Fulda in Germany; the most noteworthy 



English abbeys were those of Westminster, 
St. Mary’s of York, Fountains, Kirkstall, 
Tintern, Rievaulx, Netley; and of Scotland, 
Melrose, Paisley, and Arbroath. See A bbot. 
Monastery. 

Abbiategrasso (ab-be-a'ta-gras-so ), a 
town in the north of Italy, 15 miles w.s.w. 
of Milan. Pop. 5425. 

Ab'bot (ultimately from Syriac abba, 
father), the head of an abbey (see Abbey), 
the lady of similar rank being called abbess. 
An abbess, however, was not, like the abbot, 
allowed to exercise the spiritual functions 
of the priesthood, such as preaching, con¬ 
fessing, &c.; nor did abbesses ever succeed 
in freeing themselves from the control of 
their diocesan bishop. In the early age of 
monastic institutions (say 300 -600 a.d.) the 
monks were not priests, but simply laymen 
who retired from the world to live in com¬ 
mon, and the abbot was also a layman. In 
the course of time the abbots were usually 
ordained, and when an abbey was directly 
attached to a cathedral the bishop was also 
abbot. At first the abbeys were more re¬ 
markable for their numbers than for their 
magnitude, but latterly many of them were 
large and richly endowed, and the heads of 
such establishments became personages of 


no small influence and power, more espe¬ 
cially after the abbots succeeded (by the 
eleventh century) in freeing themselves from 
the jurisdiction of the bishop of their diocese. 
Hence families of the highest rank might 
be seen eagerly striving to obtain the titles 
of abbot and abbess for their members. The 
great object was to obtain control over the 
revenues of the abbeys, and for this pur¬ 
pose recourse was had to the device of 
holding them under a kind of trust, or, as 
it was called, in commendam. According to 
the original idea the abbot in commendam, 
or ‘commendator,’ was merely a temporary 
trustee, who drew the whole or part of the 
revenues during a vacancy, and was bound 
to apply them to specific purposes; but 
ultimately the commendator or lay abbot in 
many instances held the appointment for 
life, and was allowed to apply the whole or 
a large portion of the revenues to his own 
private use. Many of the abbots latterly 
vied with the bishops and nobility in rank 
and dignity, wearing a mitre and keeping 
up a great style. In England twenty-seven 
abbots long sat in the House of Lords. 
The Reformation introduced vast changes, 
not only in Protestant countries, where 
abbeys and all other monastic establish- 

4 








































ABBREVIATIONS. 


ABBOT 


ments were generally suppressed, but even 
in countries which still continued Roman 
Catholic; many sovereigns, while displaying 
their zeal for the R. Catholic Church by 
persecuting its opponents, not scrupling to 
imitate them in the confiscation of church 
property. 

Abbot of Misrule, the personage who took 
the chief part in the Christmas revelries of 
the English populace before the Reforma¬ 
tion. 

Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, born 1552, died 1633; studied at Ox¬ 
ford, assisted in the translation of the Bible, 
was made Bishop of Lichfield in 1609, next 
year Bishop of London, and in 1611 Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury. He retained the 
favour of James I. to the last, but after 
the accession of Charles I. his influence at 
court was superseded by that of Laud. He 
published several works, chiefly theological. 

Ab'botsford, the country-seat of SirWalter 
Scott, on the south bank of the Tweed, 
in Roxburghshire, 3 miles from Melrose, 
in the midst of picturesque scenery, forming 
an extensive and irregular pile in the 
Scottish baronial style of architecture.— 
A bbotsforcl Club, a club established at Edin¬ 
burgh for printing works throwing light on 
matters of history or literature connected 
with the writings of Sir W. Scott; issued 
34 vols. 1835-1864. 

Ab'bott, Jacob, a popular and prolific 
American writer, especially of entertaining 
and instructive books for the young; born 
1803, died 1879; was teacher and subse¬ 
quently clergyman. — His brother, John 
Stephens Cabot (b. 1805, d. 1877), Con¬ 
gregational clergyman, has written a num¬ 
ber of books, chiefly historical. —Lyman, son 
of Jacob Abbott, b. 1835, Congregational 
clergyman, has written works chiefly reli¬ 
gious in character, such as Jesus of Nazareth, 
His Life and Teachings; Popular Religious 
Dictionary, &c. 

Abbreviations, devices used in writing 
and printing to save time and space, con¬ 
sisting usually of curtailments effected in 
words and syllables by the removal of some 
letters, often of the whole of the letters ex¬ 
cept the first. The following is a list of the 
more important:— 

A.B., artium baccalaureus, bachelor of arts; 
able seaman. 

Abp., archbishop. 

A.C., ante Christum, before Christ. 

Ac., acre. ♦ 

Acc., A/c, or Acct., account. 

A. D., anno Domini, in the year of our Lord: used 

5 


also as if equivalent to ‘after Christ,’ or ‘of the 
Christian era.’ 

A.D.C., aide-de-camp. 

iEt. or Akat., cetatis (anno), in the year of his 
age. 

A.H., anno Hejirce, in the year of the Hegira. 

A.M., ante meridiem, forenoon; anno mundi, 
in the year of the world; artium magister, master 
of arts. 

Anon., anonymous. 

A.R.A., associate of Royal Academy (London). 

A. R S. A., associate of the Royal Scottish 
Academy. 

A. U.C., ab urbe condita, from the building of 
Rome (753 B.c.) 

A. V., authorized version. 

B. A., bachelor of arts. 

Bart, or Bt., baronet. 

B.C., before Christ. 

B.C.L , bachelor of civil law. 

B.D., bachelor of divinity. 

B. L., bachelor of laws. 

B.M., bachelor of medicine. 

Bp., bishop. 

B.S., bachelor of surgery. 

B.Sc., bachelor of science. 

B. V., blessed Virgin. 

C. , cap., or chap., chapter. 

C.A., chartered accountant. 

Cantab., Cantabrigiensis, of Cambridge. 
Cantuar., Cantuariensis , of Canterbury. 

C.B., companion of the Bath. 

C.D.V., carte de visite. 

C.E., civil engineer. 

Cf., confer, compare. 

C.I., order of the Crown of India. 

C.I.E., companion of the Indian Empire. 

C.J., chief-justice. 

C.M., chirurgice magister, master in surgery; 
common metre. 

C.M.G., companion of the order of St. Michael 
and St. George. 

Co., company or county. 

C.O.D., cash on delivery. 

Cr., creditor. 

Crim. con., criminal conversation. 

C.S., civil service, clerk to the signet. 

C. S.I., companion of the Star of India. 

Ct., Connecticut. 

Curt., current, the present month. 

Cwt., hundredweight. 

d. , denarius, penny or pence. 

D C., district of Columbia. 

D. C.L., doctor of civil law. 

D.D., doctor of divinity. 

Del., delineavit, drew it. 

D.F., defender of the faith. 

D.G., Dei gratia , by the grace of God. 

D.L., deputy lieutenant. 

D.Lit., doctor of literature. 

Do., ditto , the same. 

D.O.M., Deo Optimo Maximo, to God, the best 
and greatest. 

Dr., doctor, also debtor. 

D.Sc., doctor of science. 

D. V., Deo volente, God willing. 

Dwt., pennyweight. 

E. , east. 

Ebor., Eboracensis, of York. 

EC., established church. 

E.E., errors excepted. 

e. g., exempli gratia, for example. 

EL, East Indies. 

Etc. or &c., et cetera, and the rest 
Exr., executor. 



ABBREVIATIONS. 


F. or Fahr., Fahrenheit’s thermometer. 

F.A.St, fellow of the Antiquai'ian Society. 

F.C., Free Church. 

F.D., fidei defensor , defender of the faith. 

Fee ., fecit, he made or did it. 

F.G.S., fellow of the Geological Society. 

F.H.S., fellow of the Horticultural Society. 

FI., flourished. 

Fla., Florida. 

F.L.S., fellow of the Linnsean Society. 

F.M., field-marshal. 

F.O.B., free on board (goods delivered). 
F.R.A.S., fellow of the Royal Astronomical (or 
Asiatic) Society. 

F.R.C.P., fellow of the Royal College of Phy¬ 
sicians. 

F. R. C. S., fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. 
F.R.G.S., fellow of the Royal Geographical 
Society. 

F.R S., fellow of the Royal Society. 

F.R.S.E., fellow of the Royal Society of Edin¬ 
burgh. 

F.S.A., fellow of the Society of Arts or Anti¬ 
quaries. 

F. S.S., fellow of the Statistical Society 
Ft., foot or feet. 

F Z S., fellow of the Zoological Society. 

Ga , Georgia. 

Gal., gallon. 

G C.B., grand cross of the Bath. 

G C.M.G., grand cross of St. Michael and St. 
George. 

G. C.S.I., grand commander of the Star of India. 
GPO., general post-office. 

H B.M., his or her Britannic majesty. 

H. E.I.C.S., honourable East India Company’s 
service. 

Hhd., hogshead. 

H I.H , his or her imperial highness. 

H.M.S., his or her majesty’s ship. 

Hon., honourable. 

H R , house of representatives. 

H.R.H., his (her) royal highness. 

H S.H., his (her) serene highness. 

la. , Iowa. 

l b. or Ibid., ibidem, in the same place. 

Id., idem, the same. 

i.e., id est, that is. 

+ I.H.S., Jesus hominum salvator, Jesus the 
Saviour of men: originally it w r as IH2, the first 
three letters of IH20T2 ( lesous), Jesus. 

Incog., incognito, unknown. 

Inf., infra, below. 

I N.R.I., lesus Nazarenus Rex Iudceorum, 
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. 

Inst., instant, or of this month; institute. 

I O.U., I owe you. 

i.q., idem quod, the same as. 

J.P., justice of the peace. 

Jr , junior. 

J. U D., juris utriusque doctor, doctor both of 
the civil and the canon law. 

K. C.B., knight commander of the Bath. 

K.C.M.G., knightcommander of St. Michael and 

St. George. 

K. C. S. I., knight commander of the Star of India. 
KG., knight of the Garter. 

K.G.C.B., knight grand cross of the Bath. 

K P., knight of St. Patrick. 

K. T., knight of the Thistle. 

Kt. or Knt., knight. 

Ky., Kentucky. 

L. , 1., or £, pounds sterling. 

L.A., literate in arts, 

Eat., latitude. 


Lb. or lb., libra, a pound (weight). 

L.C.J., lord chief-justice. 

Ldp., lordship. 

L.D.S., licentiate in dental surgery. 

Lit. D., doctor of literature. 

L.L., Low Latin. 

L.L.A., lady literate in arts. 

LL.B., legum baccalaureus, bachelor of laws. 
LL.D., legum doctor, doctor of laws (that is, the 
civil and the canon law). 

LL.M., master of laws. 

Lon. or Long., longitude. 

L. R C. P., licentiate Royal College of Physicians 

L.R.C.S., licentiate of the Royal College of Sur¬ 
geons. 

L.S. A., licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. 

L. S.D., librae, solidi, denarii, pounds, shillings, 
pence. 

M. A., master of arts. 

Mass., Massachusetts: 

M. B., medicince baccalaureus, bachelor of medi¬ 
cine. 

M.C., member of congress; master in surgery. 

M.D., medicince doctor, doctor of medicine. 
Md., Maryland. 

Me., Maine. 

M E., mining engineer; Methodist Episcopal. 
Messi’s., messieurs, gentlemen. 

M.F.H., master of fox-hounds. 

M.I.C.E., member of the Institute of Civil 
Engineers. 

Mile., mademoiselle. 

Mme., madame. 

Mo., Missouri. 

M. P., member of Parliament. 

M.R.C.S., member of the Royal College of Sur¬ 
geons. 

M. R.C.Y.S., member of the Royal College of 
Veterinax-y Surgeons. 

M R.I. A., member of the Royal Irish Academy. 
MS., manuscript; MSS., manuscripts. 

Mus.D., musical doctor, doctor of music. 

N. , noi’th. 

N.B., nota bene, take notice; also North Britain, 
New Brunswick. 

N.C., North Carolina. 

N.D., no date. 

Nem. con., nemine contradicente, no one con¬ 
tradicting, unanimously. 

N. H., New Hampshire. 

N.J., New Jersey. 

No. numero, number. 

N.P., notary public. 

N.S., new style, Nova Scotia. 

N.S.W., New South Wales. 

N.T., New Testament. 

N.Y., New York. 

N. Z., New Zealand. 

O. , Ohio. 

Ob., obiit, died. 

O.S., old style. 

O. T., Old Testament. 

Oxon., Oxoniensis, of Oxford. 

Oz., ounce or ounces. 

Pa.. Pennsylvania. 

P. C., privy-councillor. 

P.E., Protestant Episcopal. 

Per cent., per centum by the hundred. 

Ph. D., philosophice doctor, doctor of philosophy. 
Pinx., pinxit, painted it. 

P.M., post meridiem, afternoon. 

P.O., post-office. 

P.O.O., post-office order. 

P. P., parish priest. 

Pp., pages. 


6 


ABDUCTION. 


ABD-EL-KADER 


P.F.C ., pour prendre congi, to take leave, 

Prox., proximo (mense ), next month. 

P. S., postscript. 

Q. , question; queen. 

Q.C., queen's council. 

Q.E.D., quod erat demonstrandum , which was 
to be demonstrated. 

Q.E.F., quod erat faciendum, which was to be 
done. 

Qu., query. 

Quant, suff., quantum sufficit, as much as is 
needful. 

Q. Y., quod vide, which see. 

R. , rex, regina, king, queen. 

R A., royal academician; royal artillery 

R.A.M., Royal Academy of Music. 

R.C., Roman Catholic. 

R.E., royal engineers. 

Rev., reverend. 

R.H.A., Royal Hibernian Academician. 

R.I., Rhode Island. 

R. I. P., requiescat in pace, may he rest in peace. 
R.M., royal marines. 

R.N., royal navy. 

R.S.A., royal Scottish academician. 

R.S.V.P., repondez, s’il vous plait, reply, if you 
please. 

Rt. Hon., right honourable. 

Rt. Wpful., right worshipful. 

R. V., revised version. 

S. , south. 

S. or St., saint. 

S.C., South Carolina. 

Sc., scilicet, namely, viz. 

S. J., Society of Jesus (Jesuits). 

S.P.C.K., Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge. 

S.P.Q.R., senatus populusque Romanus, the 
senate and people of Rome. 

S.S.C., solicitor before the supreme courts. 

St., saint, street. 

S.T.D., sacrce theologice doctor, doctor of divin¬ 
ity. 

S. T.P., sacrce theologice professor, professor of 
divinity. 

T. C.D., Trinity College, Dublin. 

Ult., ultimo, last. 

U. P., United Presbyterian. 

U.S., United States. 

U.S.A., United States of America. 

U. S.N., United States navy. 

V. , vide, see; also versus, against. 

Va., Virginia. 

V.C., Victoria Cross. 

Viz., videlicet, to wit, or namely. 

V.P., vice-president. 

V. S., veterinary surgeon. 

Vt., Vermont. 

W. , west. 

W.I., West Indies. 

W.S., writer to the signet. 

Xmas, Christmas. 

In LL.D., LL.B., &c., the letter is doubled, ac¬ 
cording to the Roman system, to show that the 
abbreviation represents a plural noun. 

Abd-el-Ka'der, an Arab chief born in 
Algeria, 1807; died at Damascus, 1883. He 
was the chief opponent of the French in 
their conquest of Algeria, but at last sur¬ 
rendered to them in 1847, and was impris¬ 
oned till set at liberty by Napoleon III. in 
1852. He latterly resided chiefly at Da¬ 


mascus, but made various journeys, and 
visited the Paris exhibition of 1867. He 
wrote a religious work in Arabic. 

Abde'ra, an ancient Greek city on the 
Thracian coast, the birthplace of Democritus 
(the laughing philosopher), Anaxarchus, and 
Protagoras. Its inhabitants were prover¬ 
bial for stupidity. 

Abdication, properly the voluntary, but 
sometimes also the involuntary resignation 
of an office or dignity, and more especially 
that of sovereign power. Abdication does 
not necessarily require the execution of a 
formal deed, but may be presumed from 
facts and circumstances, as in the case of 
the English Revolution in 1688, when, after 
long debate, it was resolved by both houses 
of parliament that King James II., having 
endeavoured to subvert the constitution of 
the kingdom, had * abdicated the govern¬ 
ment, and that the throne is thereby vacant.’ 
Yet the sovereign of Great Britain cannot 
constitutionally abdicate without the con¬ 
sent of both houses of parliament. 

Abdo'men, in man, the belly, or lower 
cavity of the trunk, separated from the 
upper cavity or thorax 
by the diaphragm or 
midriff, and bounded 
below by the bones of 
the pelvis. It con¬ 
tains the viscera be¬ 
longing to the digestive 
and urinary systems. 

What are called the 
abdominal regions will 
be understood from the 
accompanying cut, in 
which 1 is th e epigastric 
region, 2 the umbilical, 

3 the pubic, 4 4 the 
right and left hypo¬ 
chondriac, 5 5 the right and left lumbar, 
6 6 right and left iliac. The name is given 
to the corresponding portion of the body in 
other animals. In insects it comprises the 
whole body behind the thorax, usually con¬ 
sisting of a series of rings. 

Abdom'inal Fishes (Abdominales), a group 
of the soft-finned (or malacopterous) fishes, 
having fins upon the abdomen, and com¬ 
prising the herring, pike, salmon, carp, &c. 

Abduc'tion, a legal term, generally applied 
to denote the offence of carrying off a female, 
either forcibly or by fraudulent representa¬ 
tions. Such a delinquency in regard to a 
man is styled kidnapping. There are various 
descriptions of abduction recognized in cri- 










ABDUL-AZIZ 

minal jurisprudence, such as that of a child, 
of an heiress, or of a wife. 

Ab'dul-Az'iz, Sultan of Turkey, brother 
to Abdul-Mejid, whom he succeeded in June, 
1861. He concluded treaties of commerce 
with France and England, both of which 
countries he visited iu 1867. Deposed in 
May, 1876, he committed suicide, or more 
probably was assassinated, in J une, the same 
year. He was succeeded by his son Murad 
V. See next art. 

Ab'dul-Ham'id,Sultan of Turkey, younger 
son of Abdul-Mejid, born in 1842, succeeded 
his brother Murad V., who was deposed 
on proof of his insanity in 1876. At that 
time Turkey, which was at war with Servia, 
was compelled to agree to an armistice at 
the demand of Russia. The persecution and 
oppression of the Christian population of 
Bulgaria had roused remonstrances from 
other European countries, and a congress 
met at Constantinople to consider a con¬ 
stitution which the Forte had proclaimed. 
The conference was a failure, and in April, 
1877, war was declared by Russia. During 
the sanguinary struggle which ensued the 
Turks fought with great bravery, but they 
had ultimately to sue for peace. A treaty 
was signed at San Stefano in Feb. 1878, 
but its provisions were modified by a con¬ 
gress of the great powers which met at 
Berlin. Turkey was compelled to part with 
some of its choicest provinces, while the 
sultan also ceded the island of Cyprus to be 
occupied and administered by Britain, which 
in turn agreed to guarantee his Asiatic 
dominions to the sultan. Abdul-Hamid’s 
reign was further disturbed in 1885 by a 
revolution in Eastern Roumelia, the people 
of which have elected to be joined to Bul¬ 
garia. 

Abd-ul-Lat'if, an Arab writer and physi¬ 
cian, born at Bagdad in 1161, died there in 
1231. He was patronized by the cele¬ 
brated Saladin, and published an excellent 
description of Egypt, which is still extant. 

Ab'dul-Mej'id Khan, Sultan of Turkey, 
born in 1822 or 1823, succeeded his father, 
Mahmud II., 1st July, 1839. At the time 
of his accession Mehemet, Pasha of Egypt, 
had a second time risen against the Turkish 
yoke; his son Ibrahim had inflicted a severe 
defeat on the Turks at Nizib (24th June, 
1839), and was advancing on Constanti¬ 
nople. But the intervention of the leading 
European powers checked the designs of 
Mehemet Ali, and saved the Turkish em¬ 
pire. Abdul-Mejid was desirous of carry- 


— ABELARD. 

ing out reforms, but most of them remained 
inoperative, or caused bloody insurrections 
where attempts were made to carry them 
out. Owing to disputes between the Latin 
and Greek Churches regarding the rights of 
precedence and possession at the ‘holy places’ 
in Palestine, and to demands made by the 
czar virtually implying the right of protec¬ 
torate over the Christian subjects of the 
sultan, war broke out between Turkey and 
Russia in 1853. In the following year the 
Porte effected an alliance with France and 
England (hence the Crimean War), and later 
on with Sardinia. (See Crimean War.) 
Abdul-Mejid died in 1861, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his brother, Abdul-Aziz. 

Abecedarian, a term formed from the 
first four letters of the alphabet, and applied 
to the followers of Storch, a German Ana¬ 
baptist, in the sixteenth century, because 
they rejected all worldly knowledge, even 
the learning of the alphabet. 

A Beckett, Gilbert Abbot, English 
writer, bora near London, in 1811. He 
studied for the bar, and became one of the 
original staff of Punch, w’as long a leader- 
writer of the Times and Morning Herald, 
and contributed articles to the Illustrated 
London News. He wrote Comic History 
of England, Comic History of Rome, and 
Comic Blackstone, and between fifty and 
sixty plays, some of which still keep the 
stage. In 1849 he was appointed a metro¬ 
politan police magistrate, an office he re¬ 
tained till his death in 1856. 

A Beckett, Thomas. See Beckett. 

Abel, properly Hebei (Heb. breath, va¬ 
pour, transitoriness), the second son of 
Adam. He was a shepherd, and was slain 
by his brother Cain from jealousy because 
his sacrifice was accepted, while Cain’s was 
rejected. Several of the fathers, among 
others St. Chrysostom and Augustin, re¬ 
gard him as a type of Christ. 

Abelard (ab'e-lard) (or Abailard), Peter, 
a celebrated scholastic teacher, born near 
Nantes in Brittany, in 1079. He made 
extraordinary progress with his studies, and, 
ultimately eclipsing his teachers, he opened 
a school of scholastic philosoph y near Paris, 
which attracted crowds of students from the 
neighbouring city. His success in the fiery 
debates which were then the fashion in the 
schools made him many enemies, among 
whom was Guillaume de Champeaux, his 
former teacher, chief of the cathedral school 
of Notre-Dame, and the most advanced of 
the Realists. Abelard succeeded his adver* 

8 


ABELE-ABERCROMBIE. 


eary in this school (in 1113), and under him 
were trained many men who afterwards rose 
to eminence, among them being the future 
Pope Celestin II., Peter Lombard, and 
Arnold of Bfescia. While he was at the 
height of his popularity, and in his fortieth 
year, he became infatuated with a passion 
for Heloise—then only eighteen years of age 
—niece of Fulbert, a canon of Paris. Ob¬ 
taining a home in Fulbert’s house under the 
pretext of teaching Heloise philosophy, their 
intercourse at length became apparent, and 
Abelard, who had retired to Brittany, was 
followed by Heloise, who there gave birth 
to a son. A private marriage took place, 
and Heloise returned to her uncle’s house, 
but refusing to make public her marriage 
(as likely to spoil Abelard’s career), she was 
subjected to severe treatment at the hands 
of her uncle. To save her from this Abe¬ 
lard carried her off and placed her in a 
convent at Argenteuil, a proceeding which 
so incensed Fulbert that he hired ruffians 
who broke into Abelard’s chamber and sub¬ 
jected him to a shameful mutilation. Abe¬ 
lard, filled with grief and shame, became a 
monk in the abbey of St. Denis, and Heloise 
took the veil. When time had somewhat 
moderated his grief he resumed his lectures; 
but trouble after trouble overtook him. His 
theological writings were condemned by the 
Council of Soissons, and he retired to an 
oratory called the Paraclete, subsequently 
becoming head of the abbey of St. Gildas- 
de-Rhuys in Brittany. For a short time he 
again lectured at Paris (1136), but his doc¬ 
trines again brought persecution on him, 
and St. Bernard had him condemned by 
the council of Sens and afterwards by the 
pope. Abelard did not long survive this, 
dying at St. Marcel, near Chalon-sur-S&one, 
1142. Heloise, who had become abbess of 
the Paraclete, had him buried there, where 
she herself was afterwards laid by his side. 
Their ashes were removed to Paris in 1800, 
and in 1817 they were finally deposited be¬ 
neath a mausoleum in the cemetery of Pfere 
la Chaise. Abelard is credited with the 
invention of a new philosophical system, 
midway between Realism and Nominalism. 
A complete edition of his works was pub¬ 
lished by Cousin (2 vols. Paris, 1849-59), 
and the letters of Abelard and Heloise have 
been often published in the original and in 
translations. 

Abele (a-bel'), a name of the white poplar. 

A'belite, Abe'lian, a member of a reli¬ 
gious sect in Africa which arose in the 


fourth century after Christ. They married, 
but lived in continence, after the manner, 
as they maintained, of Abel, and attempted 
to keep up the sect by adopting the children 
of others. 

Abelmoschus (-mos'kus), a genus of 
tropical plants of the mallow family. A. 
esculentus, cultivated in India, Algeria, &c., 
yields edible pods and also a valuable fibre. 
The fruit, called okro or ochro, is used in 
soups. 

Abencerrages (ab-en-ser'a-jez), a power¬ 
ful and distinguished Moorish family of 
Granada, the chief members of which, thirty- 
six in number, are said to have been mas¬ 
sacred in the Alhambra by the king Abu- 
Hassan (latter half of the fifteenth century) 
on account of the attachment of his sister to 
one of them—a legend which has furnished 
the subject of many poems both Arabic and 
Spanish, and formed the basis for Chateau¬ 
briand’s Aventures du dernier des Aben- 
cerages. 

Ab'en Ezra, a celebrated Jewish rabbi, 
born at Toledo about 1119, travelled in pur¬ 
suit of knowledge in England, France, Italy, 
and Greece, and is supposed to have died in 
Rhodes about 1174. He particularly dis¬ 
tinguished himself as a commentator on 
Scripture. 

Abensberg (a'bens-ber^,), a Bavarian 
manufacturing town with 2000 inhabitants; 
celebrated for Napoleon’s victory over the 
Austrians, 20th April, 1809. 

Abeoku'ta. See Abbeokuta. 

Ab'er, a prefix in Celtic geographical pro¬ 
per names signifying the mouth or entrance 
of a river into the sea, or into another 
stream. It is used chiefly in Wales and 
Scotland, having the same meaning as inter. 

Abera'von, a parliamentary borough 
(Swansea dist.) of Wales, in Glamorgan¬ 
shire, near the mouth of the Avon in Swan¬ 
sea Bay, embracing Aberavon proper and 
its harbour Port Talbot. There are col¬ 
lieries, ironworks, copper-works, &c. Pop. 
1891, 6281. 

Aberbroth'ock, the older form of Ar¬ 
broath. 

Ab'ercrombie, John, m.d., a Scottish 
writer on medical and moral science, and 
an eminent physician, born in Aberdeen, 
1781, died at Edinburgh in 1844. He gra¬ 
duated at the university of Edinburgh in 
1803, and subsequently pursued his studies 
in London, returning to Edinburgh in 1804, 
where he acquired an extensive practice as 
a physician. Apart from medical treatises, 


ABERCROMBIE 


ABERDEEN. 


he is known from his Inquiries concerning 
the Intellectual Powers and his Philosophy 
of the Moral Feelings. 

Ab'ercrombie, Patrick, a Scottish his¬ 
torical writer and antiquary, born at Forfar, 
1656, date of death uncertain. Educated at 
St. Andrews and abroad, he took the degree 
of M.D., and practised as a physician in 
Edinburgh. In 1685 he was appointed phy¬ 
sician to James II. His chief work is Mar¬ 
tial Atchievements of the Scots Nation, 2 
vols. folio, 1711-16. 

Ab'ercromby, Sir Ralph, a British gen¬ 
eral, born in 1734 in Clackmannanshire, 
Scotland. He entered the army in 1756 as 
cornet in the 3d Dragoon Guards; and he 
gradually passed through all the ranks of 
the service until he became a major-general 



General Sir Ralph Abercromby. 


in 1787. He served as lieut.-general in 
Flanders, 1793-95, and was then appointed 
commander-in-chief of the forces in the 
West Indies, where he captured the islands 
of Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and 
Trinidad, with the settlements of Demerara 
and Essequibo. On his return in 1798 he 
was appointed commander-in-chief in Ire¬ 
land; and he afterwards held a correspon¬ 
ding command in Scotland. His next and 
concluding service was in the expedition to 
Egypt, of which he was commander-in- 
chief. He landed, after a severe contest, 
at Aboukir, March 8, 1801; and on the 21st 
of the same month was fought the battle of 
Alexandria, in which Sir Ralph was mor¬ 
tally wounded. 

Aberdare (-dar'), a town of South Wales, 
in Glamorganshire, pleasantly situated at 


the junction of the Cynon and Dare, 4 miles 
south-west of Merthyr-Tydfil, with exten¬ 
sive coal and iron mines in the vicinity. It 
belongs to the parliamentary borough of 
Merthyr-Tydfil. Pop. 1891, 38,513. 

Aberdeen', a royal and parliamentary 
burgh of Scotland, in the county of the same 
name, on the left bank of the Dee at its en¬ 
trance into the German Ocean, and mainly 
on several slight eminences rising above 
the river. It is one of the oldest towns in 
Scotland. Constituted a royal burgh by 
William the Lion, 1179, it was burned by 
the English in 1336, but soon rebuilt, when 
it was called New Aberdeen. The streets are 
generally spacious and regular, the houses 
built of fine grayish-white granite. It has 
many handsome public buildings, as the 
County and Municipal Buildings, Marischal 
College, Grammar School, Infirmary, Arts 
School, Music Hall Buildings, &c. The finest 
street, Union Street, is carried over a valley 
by a granite bridge, having an arch of 132 
feet span: there are also three bridges over 
the Dee, besides a railway viaduct. There 
is a tidal harbour of about 18 acres, and a 
dock 28 acres in extent. The harbour en¬ 
trance is protected by a pier 2600 feet long, 
and a breakwater 1050 feet long. The 
shipping trade is extensive. Among the in¬ 
dustries are woollen, cotton, jute, and linen 
factories ; large comb works, soap and candle 
works, provision - curing works, chemical 
works, paper works, ship-building yards, and 
establishments for preparing granite for all 
sorts of useful and ornamental work. The 
parliamentary burgh (which also includes 
Old Aberdeen and Woodside) returns two 
members to the House of Commons. Pop. 
pari, burgh, 121,905.— Old Aberdeen, a 
small but ancient town and royal burgh, lies 
about a mile north of the new town, between 
it and the river Don. Its chief buildings are 
King’s College and St. Machar’s Cathedral. 
Noteworthy features of the college build¬ 
ings are the crown-tower and the chapel, 
the latter containing some very fine old 
carved woodwork. The cathedral, now used 
as the parish church, was commenced about 
1357. Over the Don is a fine old Gothic 
bridge of one arch, erected according to 
some accounts by Robert Bruce. Pop. 2168. 
—The County of Aberdeen forms the 
north - eastern portion of Scotland, and is 
bounded on the east and north by the North 
Sea. Area, 1,251,451 acres. It is divided 
into six districts (Mar, Formartine, Buchan, 
Alford, Garioch, and Strathbogie), and is 

10 


ABERDEEN-ABERNETHY. 


generally hilly, there being in the south¬ 
west some of the highest mountains in Scot¬ 
land, as Ben Macdhui (4295 feet), Cairn- 
toul (4245), Cairngorm (4090), Lochnagar, 
&c. Its most valuable mineral is granite, 
large quantities of which are exported. The 
principal rivers are the Dee and the Don, 
both of which enter the sea at the town of 
Aberdeen. Cereals (except wheat) and other 
crops succeed well, and the number of acres 
under cultivation is nearly double that of 
any other Scottish county. Great numbers 
of cattle are fattened and sent to London 
and the south. On the banks of the upper 
Dee is situated Balmoral, a favourite resi¬ 
dence of Queen Victoria. The county re¬ 
turns two members to parliament. Pop. 
281,331.— Aberdeen University, as now 
constituted, derives its origin from two 
different foundations; one, the University 
and King’s College (Old Aberdeen), founded 
in 1494 by Bishop Elphinstone, under the 
authority of a papal bull obtained at the 
instance of James IV.; the other, Marischal 
College and University (New Aberdeen), 
founded in 1593 by Geo. Keith, Earl Mari¬ 
schal, by a charter ratified by act of parlia¬ 
ment. The two foundations existed as 
separate universities, both having the right 
of conferring degrees, till 1860, when they 
were united and incorporated into one uni¬ 
versity, the University of Aberdeen. Hold¬ 
ing the funds of both colleges and ranking 
from 1494, the university has about 300 
bursaries or exhibitions, mostly open to 
public competition, and a number of money 
prizes and scholarships. The classes for arts 
and divinity are held in King’s College, and 
those for law and medicine in Marischal 
College. There is a full teaching staff in 
the faculties of arts, medicine, and divinity, 
and two professors in the faculty of law. 
There are in all 22 professors and over 800 
matriculated students. The constitution of 
the university is similar to that of Edin¬ 
burgh and the other Scottish universities. 
The library numbers over 80,000 volumes. 
The university unites with that of Glasgow 
in sending one member to parliament. 

Aberdeen', George Hamilton Gordon, 
Earl of, British statesman, born in 1784, 
died in 1860. He began his diplomatic life 
in 1801 as attach^ to Lord Cornwallis’s em¬ 
bassy to France, which resulted in the 
signing of the treaty of Amiens. In 1806 
he entered parliament as a Scottish repre¬ 
sentative peer, and in 1813 was intrusted 
with a successful mission to Austria for the 

11 


purpose of inducing the emperor to join the 
coalition of sovereigns against Bonaparte. 
In 1814 he was created a British peer, and 
in 1828 he became foreign secretary under 
the Duke of \\ ellington’s administration. 
During the short premiership of Sir Robert 



Earl of Aberdeen. 


Peel in 1834-35 he acted as colonial secre¬ 
tary, and when Sir Robert again became 
premier in 1841 he took office as secretary 
for foreign affairs. Quitting office with his 
chief in 1846, he came, on the death of Peel 
in 1850, to be regarded as the leader of the 
Conservative free-trade party. On the Derby 
ministry failing to maintain its place Lord 
Aberdeen returned to office in the end of 
1852 as head of a coalition ministry. The 
principal event which marked his adminis¬ 
tration was the Crimean war; but the bad 
management of this irritated the country, 
and the ministry resigned in 1855. This 
event marks the close of Lord Aberdeen’s 
public career. From his travels and his ac¬ 
quaintance with Greece and its antiquities 
he was called by Byron ‘ the travelled 
thane, Athenian Aberdeen.’ 

Ab'erdevine. See Siskin. 

Abergavenny (generally pron. ab-er- 
ga'ni), a town of England, in Monmouth¬ 
shire. It manufactures woollens and shoes, 
and has a considerable trade, there being 
extensive coal and iron mines in the vicinity. 
Pop. 1891, 7640. 

Abemethy (ab-er-neth'i), John, an emi¬ 
nent English surgeon, of somewhat eccentric 
habits, born in 1764 in London, a pupil of the 


ABERRATION 

celebrated John Hunter. In 1787 he became 
assistant surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hos¬ 
pital, and shortly after lecturer on anatomy 
and surgery. In 1815 he was elected prin¬ 
cipal surgeon, and under his auspices the 
hospital attained a celebrity which it had 
never before enjoyed. He published Surgi¬ 
cal Observations; The Constitutional Origin 
and Treatment of Local Diseases; and 
Lectures, explanatory of Hunter's opinions 
of the vital processes; besides smaller essays. 
He died in 1831. 

Aberration, in astronomy, the difference 
between the true and the observed position 
of a heavenly body, the result of the com¬ 
bined effect of the motion of light and the 
motion of the eye of the observer caused by 
the annual or diurnal motion of the earth; 
or of the motion of light and that of the 
body from which the light proceeds. When 
the auxiliary cause is the annual revolution 
of the earth round the sun it is called annual 
aberration, in consequence of which a fixed 
star may appear as. much as 20"‘4 from its 
true position; when the auxiliary cause is 
the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis it 
is called diurnal aberration, which amounts 
at the greatest to 0"*3; and when the auxil¬ 
iary cause is the motion of the body from 
which the light proceeds it is called planet - 
ary aberration. 

Abersychan (ab-er-sik'an), a town of Mon¬ 
mouthshire, England, about 10 miles north 
from Newport, in a rich coal-mining dis¬ 
trict. Pop. 1891, 15,296. 

Aberystwith (ab-er-ist'with), a seaport 
and fashionable watering-place of Wales, 
county of Cardigan, on Cardigan Bay. The 
town is well built, and the environs are pic¬ 
turesque. There is here a University College 
occupying a handsome Gothic building. Pop. 
1891, 6696. 

Abgar, an Oriental ruler of the time of 
the Roman emperor Tiberius (a.d. 14-37), 
said to have written a letter to our Saviour. 

Abhor'rers, in English history a name 
given to the court party in 1679-80, who, 
on petitions being presented to Charles II. 
praying him to summon parliament, signed 
counter-petitions expressing abhorrence for 
those who were thus attempting to encroach 
on the royal prerogative. 

A'bib, the first month of thq Jewish eccle¬ 
siastical year, and the seventh of the civil year, 
corresponding to the latter part of March 
and the first of April. Also called Nisan. 

Abies (ab'i-es), a genus of trees. See Fir 
and Spruce, 


— ABORTION. 

Ab'ingdon, a town of England, in Berk¬ 
shire, 50 miles north-west of London, on the 
right bank of the Thames. It was an im¬ 
portant place in Anglo-Saxon times, and 
Offa, king of Mercia, had a palace in it. 
Formerly a pari, bor., it now gives name to 
a pari. div. of Berks. Pop. 1891, 6557. 

Abiogenesis (a-bi-o-jen'e-sis), the doctrine 
or hypothesis that living matter may be 
pi-oduced from non-living; spontaneous gen¬ 
eration. See Generation ( Spontaneous ). 

Abjura'tion, Oath of, an oath which by 
an English act passed in 1701 had to be 
taken by all holders of public offices, clergy¬ 
men, teachers, members of the universities, 
and lawyers, adjuring and renouncing the 
exiled Stuarts- superseded in 1858 by a 
more comprehensive oath, declaring alle¬ 
giance to the present royal family .—A bjura- 
tion of the realm was an oath that a person 
guilty of felony, and who had taken sanc¬ 
tuary, might take to go into exile, and not 
return on pain of death. 

Abka'sia, a Russian district, at the wes¬ 
tern extremity and south of the Caucasus, 
between the mountains and the Black Sea. 
The Abkasians form a race distinguished 
from their neighbours in various respects. 
At one time they were Christians, but lat¬ 
terly adopted Mohammedanism. Recently 
many of them have migrated into Turkish 
territory. 

Ab'lative, a tei-m applied to a case of 
nouns, adjectives, and pronouns in Latin, 
Sanskrit, and some other languages; origi¬ 
nally given to the case in Latin because sepa¬ 
ration from {ah, from, latus, taken) was con¬ 
sidered to be one of the chief ideas expressed 
by 0 the case. 

Abo (o'bo), a town and port in Russian 
Finland, the see of an archbishop, and the 
capital of Finland till 1819, when it was 
supplanted by Helsingfors. Pop. 23,000. 

Abolitionists. See Slavery. 

Aboma'sum, Aboma'sus, the fourth stom¬ 
ach of ruminating animals, next the omasum 
or third stomach. 

Abo'mey, or Agbo'mey, the capital of the 
kingdom of Dahomey, in West Africa, in a 
fertile plain, near the coast of Guinea. Pop. 
30,000. 

Aborigines (ab-o-rij'i-nez), the name given 
in general to the earliest known inhabitants 
of a country, those who are supposed to have 
inhabited the land from the beginning (L. 
ab origine ). [The singular of the word is 
Aboriginal, or incorrectly Aborigine .] 

Abortion, in medicine, the expulsion of 
12 



ABOUKIR 


ABRAXAS. 


the foetus before it is capable of independent 
existence. This may take place at any period 
of pregnancy before the completion of the 
twenty-eighth week. A child born after that 
time is said to b e premature. Abortion may 
be the result of the general debility or ill- 
health of the mother, of a plethoric consti¬ 
tution, of special affections of the uterus, of 
severe exertions, sudden shocks, &c. Various 
medicinal substances, generally violent em- 
menagogues or drastic medicines, are be¬ 
lieved to have the effect of provoking abor¬ 
tion, and are sometimes resorted to for this 
purpose. Attempts to procure abortion are 
punishable by law in all civilized states.— 
The term is applied in botany to denote the 
suppression by non-development of one or 
more of the parts of a flower, which consists 
normally of four whorls—namely, calyx, 
corolla, stamens, and pistil. 

Aboukir (a-bo-ker'; ancient Canopus ), a 
small village on the Egyptian coast, 10 
miles east of Alexandria. In Aboukir Bay 
took place the naval battle in which Nelson 
annihilated a French fleet on the night of 
1st and 2d August, 1798, thus totally de¬ 
stroying the naval power of France in the 
Mediterranean. Near this place on 25th 
July, 1799, Napoleon defeated the Turks 
under Mustapha; and on March 8, 1801, 
Sir Ralph Abercromby effected the landing 
of a British army against the French. 

Abou-Simbel. See Ipsambul. 

About (a-bo), Edmond Franqois Val¬ 
entin, a French novelist and miscellaneous 
writer, born in 1828, died in 1885. He was 
educated at the Lycee Charlemagne and 
the ficole Normale, Paris; was sent at gov¬ 
ernment expense to the French school at 
Athens; on his return to Paris, devoted 
himself to literature. Principal novels: 
Tolla, Le Roi des Montagnes, Germaine, 
Madelon, Le Fellah, La Vieille Roche, 
L’lnfame, Les Manages de Province, Le 
Roman d’un Brave Homme, &c.; miscel¬ 
laneous works: La Grfece Contemporaine, 
La Question Romaine, La Prusse en ] 860, 
Rome Contemporaine, &c. He was latterly 
elected a member of the Academy. About 
wrote in a bright, humorous, and interest¬ 
ing style, and his novels have been very 
popular. 

Abracadab'ra, a word of eastern origin 
used in incantations. When written on 
paper so as to form a triangle, the first line 
containing the word in full, the one below 
it omitting the last letter, and so on each 
time until only one letter remained, and 

13 


worn as an amulet, it was supposed to be 
an antidote against certain diseases. 


A B 


R 

A 


C A 

D 

A 

A 

B 

R 


A 

C A 

D 

A 

A 


B 

R 


A C 

A 

D 


A 

B 


R 

A C 

A 

D 



A 

B 


R A 

C 

A 



A 


B 

R A 

C 

A 




A 


B R 

A 

C 





A 

B R 

A 







A B 

R 







A B 








A 




Abraham, originally Abram, the greatest 
of the Hebrew patriarchs, was born at Ur 
in Chaldea in 2153 b.c. according to Hales, 
in 1996 B.c. according to Ussher, while 
Bunsen says he lived 2850 B.c. He migrated, 
accompanied by his wife Sarah and his 
nephew Lot, to Canaan, where he led a 
nomadic life, which extended over 175 years. 
His two sons Isaac and Ishmael were the 
progenitors of the Jews and Arabs respec¬ 
tively. 

Abraham, Heights or Plains of. See 
Quebec. 

Abraham a Santa Clara, a German 
pulpit orator, real name Ulrich Megerle, 
born in 1642. As a preacher he acquired 
so great a reputation that in 1669 he was 
appointed court-preacher in Vienna, where 
he died in 1709. His sermons are full of 
homely, grotesque humour, often of coarse 
wit, and impartial severity towards all classes 
of society. 

Abraham-men, originally a set of mendi¬ 
cant lunatics from Bethlehem Hospital, 
London; but as many assumed, without right, 
the badge worn by them the term came to 
signif y an impostor who travelled about the 
country seeking alms, under the pretence of 
lunacy. 

Ab'ramis, a genus of fishes. See Bream. 

Abran'tes, a fortified town of Portugal, 
on the right bank of the Tagus (here navi¬ 
gable), 73 miles n.e. of Lisbon, with which 
it carries on an active trade. Pop. 6076. 

Abrantes, Duke of. See Junot. 

Abrax'as (or Abrasax) Stones, the name 
given to stones or gems found in Syria, 
Egypt, and elsewhere, cut into almost every 
variety of shape, but generally having a 
human trunk and arms, with a cock’s head, 
two serpents’ tails for the legs, &c., and the 
word Abraxas or Abrasax in Greek char¬ 
acters engraved upon them. They appear 
to have been first used by the Gnostic sect. 


ABROGATION-ABSORPTION. 


and eventually came to be used as talis¬ 
mans. 

Abrogation, the repealing of a law by a 
competent authority. 

Abro'ma, a genus of small trees, natives 
of India, Java, &c., one species of which, A. 
augusta, has a bark yielding a strong white 
fibre, from which good cordage is made. 

Abrupt', in botany, terminating suddenly, 
as if a part were cut short off. 

Ab'rus, a genus of papilionaceous plants, 
order Leguminosee, one species of which, 
Abrus precatorius, a delicate twining shrub, 
a native of the East Indies, and found also 
in tropical parts of Africa and America, has 
round brilliant scarlet seeds, used to make 
necklaces and rosaries. Its root is sweetish 
and mucilaginous, and is used as a substitute 
for liquorice under the name of Indian 
liquorice. 

Abruzzi (a-brut'se), a division of Italy 
on the Adriatic, between Umbria and the 
Marches on the north, and Apulia on the 
south, comprising the provinces of Abruzzo 
Citeriore, Abruzzo Ulteriore I., and Abruzzo 
Ulteriore II., which, along with Molise, 
form a government ( compartimento ). The 
sea-coast of about 80 miles does not possess 
a single harbour. The interior is rugged 
and mountainous, being traversed through¬ 
out by the Apennines. The lower parts 
consist of fertile plains and valleys, yielding 
corn, wine, oil, almonds, saffron, &c.; area, 
6677 sq. miles; pop. 1,386,817. 

Ab'salom, or Axel, a Danish prelate, 
statesman, and warrior, born in 1128, died 
1201 or 1202. He became the intimate 
friend and counsellor of his sovereign Walde- 
mar I., who appointed him Archbishop of 
Lund. He cleared the sea of the Slavonic 
pirates who had long infested it, secured 
the independence of the kingdom by defeat¬ 
ing a powerful fleet of the Emperor Bar- 
barossa, and built the castle of Axelborg, 
the nucleus of Copenhagen. Turning his 
thoughts to literature he caused the History 
of Denmark to be drawn up by Saxo Gram¬ 
maticus and Sueno Aagesen. 

Ab'scess, any collection of purulent matter 
or pus formed in some tissue or organ of the 
body, and confined within some circum¬ 
scribed area, of varying size, but always 
painful and often dangerous. 

Absentee', the name which has been given 
to a person who possesses property in one 
country, and resides and spends his income 
in another. This practice is especially pre¬ 
valent among Irish land-owners, and many 


political economists have ascribed much of 
the poverty and discontent in Ireland to 
absenteeism. 

Ab'sinth, French Absinthe (ab-sant), a 
liqueur consisting of an alcoholic solution 
strongly flavoured with an extract of several 
sorts of wormwood, oil of anise, &c. When 
taken habitually, or in excess, its effects are 
very pernicious. It is a favourite drink of 
the Parisians. 

Ab'solute, in a general sense, loosed or 
freed from all limitations or conditions. In 
politics, an absolute monarchy is that form 
of government in which the ruler is un¬ 
limited or uncontrolled by constitutional 
checks. In modern metaphysics the Abso¬ 
lute represents the unconditioned, infinite, 
and self-existent. 

Absolution, remission of a penitent’s sins 
in the name of God. It is commonly main¬ 
tained that down to the twelfth century 
the priests used only what is called the 
precatory formula, ‘May God or Christ ab¬ 
solve thee,’ which is still the form in the 
Greek Church; whereas the Roman Catho¬ 
lic uses the expression ‘ I absolve thee,’ thus 
regarding the forgiveness of sins as in the 
power of the priest (the indicative form). 
This theory of absolution was confirmed by 
the Council of Trent. The passages of Scrip¬ 
ture on which the Roman Catholic Church 
founds in laying down its doctrine of abso¬ 
lution are such as Mat. xvi. 19; xviii. 18; 
John xx. 23. Among Protestants absolu¬ 
tion properly means a sentence by which 
a person who stands excommunicated is re¬ 
leased from that punishment. 

Absor'bents, the system of minute vessels 
by which the nutritive elements of food and 
other matters are carried into the circulation 
of vertebrate animals. The vessels consist 
of two different sets, called respectively lac- 
teals and lymphatics. The former arise from 
the digestive tract, the latter from the tis¬ 
sues generally, both joining a common trunk 
which ultimately enters the blood-vessel sys¬ 
tem. Absorbents in medicine are substances 
such as chalk, charcoal, &c., that absorb or 
suck up excessive seci'etion of fluid or gas. 

Absorp'tion, in physiology, one of the vital 
functions by which the materials of nutri¬ 
tion and growth are absorbed and conveyed 
to the organs of plants and animals. In 
vertebrate animals this is done by the lym¬ 
phatics and lacteals, in plants chiefly by 
the roots. See A bsorbents. 

In physics, absorption of colour is the 
phenomenon observed when certain colours 

14 


ABSTINENCE 


ABYSSINIA. 


are retained or prevented from passing 
through transparent bodies; thus pieces of 
coloured glass are almost opaque to some 
parts of the spectrum, while allowing other 
colours to pass through freely. 

Abstinence. See Fasting, Temperance. 

Abstraction, the operation of the mind 
by which it disregards part of what is pre¬ 
sented to its observation in order to concen¬ 
trate its attention on the remainder. It is 
the foundation of the operation of gener¬ 
alization, by which we arrive at general 
conceptions. In order, for example, to form 
the conception of a horse, we disregard the 
colour and other peculiarities of the parti¬ 
cular horses observed by us, and attend only 
to those qualities which all horses have in 
common. In rising to the conception of an 
animal we disregard still more qualities, and 
attend only to those which all animals have 
in common with one another. 

Abu (a-bo'), a granitic mountain of India 
in Sirohi state, Rajputana, rising precipi¬ 
tously from the surrounding plains, its 
top forming a picturesque and varied tract 
14 miles long and 2 to 4 broad; highest 
point 5653 ft. It is a hot-weather resort 
of Europeans, and is the site of two most 
beautiful Jain temples. 

Abu-Bekr, or Father of the Virgin, 
the father-in-law and first successor of Mo¬ 
hammed. His right to the succession was un¬ 
successfully contested by Ali, Mohammed’s 
son-in-law, and a schism took place, which 
divided the Mohammedans into the two great 
sects of Sunnites and Shiites, the former 
maintaining the validity of Abu-Bekr’s and 
the latter that of Ali’s claim. 

Abukir'. See Aboukir. 

Abu Klea, a group of wells, surrounded 
by steep, black mountains, about 120 miles 
from Khartoum, in the Soudan, where, on 
the 17th January, 1885, Sir Herbert Stewart, 
with 1500 men, defeated the Mahdi’s troops, 
numbering 10,000. 

Abulfara'gius, Gregory, a distinguished 
scholar, a Jew by birth (hence the name of 
Barhebrceus, often given him), author of 
numerous works in Arabic and Syriac, was 
bom in Armenia in 1226, died in 1286. 
About 1264 he was ordained bishop of Guba, 
afterwards of Aleppo, and about 1264 was 
appointed primate of the Jacobite Chris¬ 
tians. His principal work is a History of 
the World, from the creation to his own day, 
written in Syriac, with an abridged version 
in Arabic, entitled The Abridged History 
of the Dynasties. 


Abul'feda, Arab writer, Prince of Hamah, 
in Syria, of the same family that had pro¬ 
duced Saladin, famous as an historian and 
geographer, was born at Damascus 1273, 
died 1331. Amid the cares of government 
he devoted himself with zeal to study, drew 
the learned around him, and rendered his 
power and wealth subservient to the cause 
of science. His most important works are 
his History of the Human Race (the portion 
from the birth of Mohammed to his own 
time being valuable), and his geography, 
called The True Situation of Countries. 

Abury (a'be-ri). See Avebury. 

Abushehr (a-bo-shar'). See Bushire. 

Abu-Simbel. See Ipsambul. 

Abu'tilon, a genus of plants, order Mal¬ 
vaceae, sometimes called Indian mallows, 
inhabiting the East Indies. Australia, Brazil, 
Siberia, &c. Several of them yield a valu¬ 
able hemp-like fibre, as A. indicum and A. 
avicennce. The latter, now a troublesome 
weed in the Middle United States, has been 
recommended for cultivation, and is some¬ 
times called American jute. 

Abut'ment, the part of a bridge which 
receives and resists the lateral outward 
thrust of an arch; the masonry, rock, or 
other solid materials from which an arch 
springs. 

Aby'dos (1), an ancient city of Asia Minor, 
on the Hellespont, at the narrowest part 
of the strait, opposite Sestos. Leander, say 
ancient writers, swam nightly from Abydos 
to Sestos to see his loved Hero—a feat in 
swimming accomplished also by Lord Byron. 
—(2), an ancient city of Upper Egypt, about 
6 miles west of the Nile, now represented 
only by ruins of temples, tombs, &c. It 
was celebrated as the burying-place of the 
god Osiris, and its oldest temple was dedi¬ 
cated to him. Here, in 1818, was dis¬ 
covered the famous Abydos Tablet, now in 
the British Museum, and containing a list 
of the predecessors of Raineses the Great, 
which was supplemented by the discovery 
of a similar historical tablet in 1864. 

Abyssin'ia (Arabic Ilabesh) a country of 
Eastern Africa, which, roughly speaking, 
may be said to extend from lat. 8° to 16° 
N. and Ion. 35° to 41° E. ; having Nubia on 
the N.W., the Soudan on the w., the Red 
Sea littoral and the Danakil territory on the 
E., and the country of the Gallas on the s.; 
total area about 120,000 sq. m.; chief di¬ 
visions Tigre, Amhara, and Shoa. It is as 
a whole an elevated region, with a general 
slope to the north-west. The more marked 


15 


ABYSSINIA. 


physical features are a vast series of table - 
lauds, of various and ofteu of great eleva¬ 
tions, and numerous masses or ranges of high 
and rugged mountains, dispersed over the 
surface in apparently the wildest confusion. 
Along the deep and tremendous ravines 
that divide the plateaux rush innumerable 
streams, which impart extraordinary fer¬ 
tility to the plains and valleys below. The 
mountains in various parts of the country 
rise to 12,000 and 13,000 feet, while some 
of the peaks are over 15,000 feet (Ras 
Dashan being 15,160), and are always cov¬ 
ered with snow. The principal rivers be¬ 
long to the 
Nile basin, 
the chief be¬ 
ing the im¬ 
petuous Ta- 
cazzd (‘the 
Terrible’), in 
the north,and 
the Abai in 
the south, the 
latter being 
really the 
upper por¬ 
tion of the 
Blue Nile. 

The princi¬ 
pal lake is 
Lake Tzana 
or Dembea 
(from which 
issues the 
Abai), up¬ 
wards of 6000 
feet above the sea, having a length of about 
45 and a breadth of 35 miles. Round this 
lake lies a fertile plain, emphatically called 
the granary of the country. — According 
to elevation there are several zones of 
vegetation. Within the lowest belt, which 
reaches an elevation of 4800 feet, cotton, 
wild indigo, acacias, ebony, baobabs, sugar- 
canes, coJffee-trees, date-palms, &c., flour¬ 
ish, while the larger animals are lions, 
panthers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippo¬ 
potamuses, jackals, hyenas, bears, numer¬ 
ous antelopes, monkeys, and crocodiles. The 
middle zone, rising to 9000 feet, produces 
the grains, grasses, and fruits of southern 
Europe, the orange, vine, peach, apricot, 
the bamboo, sycamore-tree, &c. The prin¬ 
cipal grains are millet, barley, wheat, maize, 
and teff, the latter a small seed, a favourite 
bread-stuff of the Abyssinians. Two, and 
in some places three, crops are obtained in 


one year. Ail the domestic animals of 
Europe, except swine, are known. There 
is a variety of ox with immense horns. The 
highest zone, reaching to 14,000 feet, has 
but little wood, and generally scanty vege¬ 
tation, the hardier corn-plants only being 
grown; but oxen, goats, and long-woolled 
sheep find abundant pasture. — The climate 
is as various as the surface, but as a whole 
is temperate and agreeable; in some of the 
valleys the heat is often excessive, while on 
the mountains the weather is cold. In cer¬ 
tain of the lower districts malaria prevails. 
—The chief mineral products are sulphur, 
iron, copper, coal, and salt, the latter serv¬ 
ing to some extent as money. There has 
been a great intermixture of races in Abys¬ 
sinia. What may be considered the Abys¬ 
sinians proper, seem to have a blood-rela¬ 
tionship with the Bedouin Arabs. The 
complexion varies from very dark through 
different shades of brown and copper to 
olive. The figure is usually symmetrical. 
Other races are the black Gallas from the 
south; the Falashas, who claim descent from 
Abraham, and retain many Jewish charac¬ 
teristics ; the Agows, Gongas, &c. The 
great majority of the people profess Chris¬ 
tianity, belonging, like the Copts, to the 
sect of the Monophysites. Their religion 
consists chiefly in the performance of empty 
ceremonies, and gross superstition as well 
as ignorance prevails. The head of the 
church is called the Abuna (‘our father’), 
and is consecrated by the Coptic patriarch 
of Alexandria. Geez or Ethiopian is the 
language of their sacred books: it has long 
ago ceased to be spoken. The chief spoken 
language is the Amharic; in it some books 
have been published. Mohammedanism ap¬ 
pears to be gaining ground in Abyssinia, and 
in respect of morality the Moslems stand 
higher than the Christians. A corrupt form 
of Judaism is professed by the Falashas.— 
The bulk of the people are devoted to agri¬ 
culture and cattle-breeding. The trade and 
manufactures are of small importance. A 
good deal of common cotton cloth and some 
finer woven fabrics are produced. Leather 
is prepared to some extent, silver filagree 
work is produced, and there are manufac¬ 
tures of common articles of iron and brass, 
coarse black pottery, &c. A small foreign 
trade used to be carried on through Mas- 
sowa, on the Red Sea (now in the hands of the 
Italians), the principal exports being hides, 
coffee, honey, w^ax, gum, ivory, &c., the im¬ 
ports textile fabrics, fire-arms, tobacco, &c. 

16 














ABYSSINIA-ACACIA. 


The_Abyssinians were converted to Chris¬ 
tianity in the fourth century, by some mis¬ 
sionaries from Alexandria. In the sixth 
century the power of the sovereigns of their 
kingdom, which was generally known as 
Ethiopia, had attained its height; but be¬ 
fore another had expired the Arabs had 
invaded the country, and obtained a foot¬ 
ing. For several centuries subsequently the 
kingdom continued in a distracted state, 
being now torn by internal commotions and 
now invaded by external enemies (Moham¬ 
medans and 
Gallas). To 
protect himself 
from the last 
the Emperor of 
Abyssinia ap¬ 
plied, about the 
middle of the 
sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, to the 
King of Portu¬ 
gal for assist¬ 
ance, promis¬ 
ing, at the same 
time, implicit 
submission to 
the pope. The 
solicited aid 
was sent, and 
the empire 
saved. The 
Roman Catho¬ 
lic priests en¬ 
deavoured to 
induce the em¬ 
peror and his family to renounce the tenets 
and rites of the Coptic Church, and to 
adopt those of Rome. This attempt, how¬ 
ever, was resisted by the ecclesiastics and 
the people, and ended, after a long struggle, 
in the expulsion of the Catholic priests about 
1630. The kingdom gradually fell into a 
state of anarchy, and was broken up into 
several independent states. An attempt 
to revive the power of the ancient kingdom 
of Ethiopia was commenced about the 
middle of the present century by King Theo¬ 
dore. He introduced European artisans, 
and went to work wisely in many ways, but 
his cruelty and tyranny counteracted his 
politic measures. In consequence of a slight, 
real or fancied, which he had received at 
the hands of the British government, he 
threw Consul Cameron and a number of 
other British subjects into prison, in 1863, 
and refused to give them up. To effect their 
VOL. I. 17 


release an army of nearly 12,000 men, under 
Sir Robert (afterwards Lord) Napier, was 
despatched from Bombay in 1867. The force 
landed at Zoulla on the Red Sea, and 
marching up the country came within sight 
of the hill-fortress of Magdala in April, 
1868. After being defeated in a battle 
Theodore delivered up the captives and shut 
himself up in Magdala, which was taken by 
storm on the 13th April, Theodore being 
found among the slain. After the with¬ 
drawal of the British fighting immediately 

began among 
the chiefs of 
the different 
provinces, but 
at last the 
country was di¬ 
vided between 
Kasa, who se¬ 
cured the nor¬ 
thern and 
larger portion 
(Tigrti and 
Amhara) and 
assumed the 
name of King 
Johannes, and 
Menelek, who 
gained posses¬ 
sion of Shoa. 
Latterly Jo¬ 
hannes made 
himself su¬ 
preme, and in 
1881 assumed 
the title of em¬ 
peror (negus negest —king of kings), having 
under him the Kings of Shoa and Gojam. 
Debra Tabor, about 30 miles east of Lake 
Dembea,is his chief residence,though Gondar 
is often regarded as the capital. Advan¬ 
tage was taken of the troubles in Abyssinia 
by the Egyptians in the north and the Gallas 
in the south to acquire additional territory 
at its expense. Egypt annexed the region 
round Massowa, Abyssinia having been thus- 
shut out from the sea. Hostilities have been 
repeatedly carried on between Johannes and 
the Egyptians on this account, as well as 
more recently with the Italians. Johannes 
was succeeded in 1889 by Menelek II., and 
an Italian protectorate was formed, con¬ 
firmed by a convention for mutual protec¬ 
tion the same year. Population, 5,000,000. 

Aca'cia, a genus of plants, nat. order Legu- 
minosse, sub-order Mimoseae, consisting of 
kees or shrubs with compound pinnate 



Abyssinian Chief and Soldiers. 







ACADEMY. 


leaves and small leaflets, growing in Africa, 
Arabia, the East Indies, Australia, &c. The 
flowers, usually small, are arranged in spikes 
or globular heads at the axils of the leaves 
near the extremity of the branches. The 
corolla is bell or funnel shaped; stamens 



are numerous; the fruit is a dry unjointed 
pod. Several of the species yield gum-arabic 
and other gums; some have astringent barks 
and pods, used in tanning. A. Catechu, an 
Indian species, yields the valuable astrin¬ 
gent called catechu; A. dealbdta ,the wattle- 
tree of Australia, from 15 to 30 feet in 
height, is the most beautiful and useful of 
the species found there. Its bark contains 
a large percentage of tannin, and is hence 
exported. Some species yield valuable tim¬ 
ber; some are cultivated for the beauty of 
their flowers. 

Acad'emy, an association for the promo¬ 
tion of literature, science, or art; established 
sometimes by government, sometimes by 
the voluntary union of private individuals. 
The name Academy was first applied to the 
philosophical school of Plato, from the place 
where he used to teach, a grove or garden 
at Athens which was said to have belonged 
originally to the hero Academus. Academies 
devote themselves either to the cultivation 
of science generally or to the promotion of 


a particular branch of study, as antiquities, 
language, and the fine arts. The most cele¬ 
brated institutions bearing the name of 
academies, and designed for the encourage¬ 
ment of science, antiquities, and language 
respectively, are the French Academie des 
Sciences (founded by Colbert in 1666), 
Academie des Inscriptions (founded by Col¬ 
bert in 1663), and Academie Fran^aise 
(founded by Richelieu in 1635), all of which 
are now merged in the National Institute. 
The oldest of the academies instituted for 
the improvement of language is the Italian 
Accademia della Crusca (now the Florentine 
Academy), formed in 1582, and chiefly cele¬ 
brated for the compilation of an excellent 
dictionary of the Italian language, and for 
the publication of several carefully prepared 
editions of ancient Italian poets. In Britain 
the name of academy, in the more dignified 
sense of the term, is confined almost exclu¬ 
sively to certain institutions for the promo¬ 
tion of the fine arts, such as the Royal Aca¬ 
demy of Arts and the Royal Scottish Aca¬ 
demy. The Royal Academy of Arts (usually 
called simply the Royal Academy) was 
founded in London in 1768, ‘for the pur¬ 
pose of cultivating and improving the arts 
of painting, sculpture, and architecture.’ 
The Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, 
Sculpture, and Architecture was founded 
in 1826 and incorporated in 1838. It con¬ 
sists of thirty academicians and twenty 
associates. The Royal Hibernian Academy 
at Dublin was incorporated in 1823, and 
reorganized in 1861. It consists of thirty 
members and ten associates. The Amer¬ 
ican Philosophical Society, the oldest 
scientific institution in America, was or¬ 
ganized in 1744, in Philadelphia. The 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila¬ 
delphia was organized in 1812. The 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
incorporated in 1780, is located at Boston, 
as also the Society of Natural History. 
The Connecticut Academy of Arts and 
Sciences was organized at New Haven in 
1799. The New York Academy of Sciences 
was incorporated as the Lyceum of Natural 
History in 1818. The Peabody Academy 
of Sciences, Salem, Mass., was endowed by 
George Peabody in 1867. The Smithson¬ 
ian Institution, Washington, D. C., founded 
by James Smithson, an English scientist, 
incorporated by Congress in 1846. Its pub¬ 
lications have given it prominent standing 
among scientists. In the great West there 
are active Academies in Cincinnati. St 

18 










ACADEMY-ACCELERATION. 


Louis, Chicago, Davenport, San Francisco, 
Cal., and New Orleans. 

Academy, The, a London weekly review 
of literature, science, and art, established 
(as a monthly periodical) in 1869. Its 
articles are signed by the writers. Its 
founder and first editor was Dr. C. E. 
Appleton (born, 1841; died, 1879). 

Aca'dia (French Acadie ), the name for¬ 
merly given to Nova Scotia. It received its 
first colonists from France in 1604, beinsf 
then a possession of that country, but it 
passed to Britain, by the Peace of Utrecht, 
in 1713. In 1756, 18,000 of the French 
inhabitants were forcibly removed from 
their homes on account of their hostility to 
the British, an incident on which is based 
Longfellow’s Evangeline. 

Acale'pha (Gr. akaleplie , a nettle, from 
their stinging properties), a term formerly 
used to denote the Medusae or jelly-fishes 
and their allies. 

Acantha'cese, or Acanthads, a natural 
order of dicotyledonous herbaceous plants 
or shrubs, with opposite leaves and mono- 
petalous corolla, mostly tropical; species 
about 1400. See Acanthus. 

Acanthop'teri, Acanthopterygii (Gr. 



a , b , c , Spines of the dorsal, anal, and ventral fins 
of Acanthopterygii. 

akantha, a spine, pterygion, a fin), a group 
of fishes, distinguished by the fact that at 
least the first rays in each fin exist in the 
form of stiff spines; it includes the perch, 
mullet, mackerel, gurnard, wrasse, &c. 



Acanthus of Corinthian Capital. 


Acan'thus, a genus of herbaceous plants 
or shrubs, order Acanthacese, mostly tropi- 

19 


cal, two species of which, A. mollis and .4. 
spinosus (the bear’s-breech or brankursine), 
are characterized by large white flowers and 
deeply indented shining leaves. They are 
favourite ornamental plants in British gar¬ 
dens.—In architecture the name is given to 
a kind of foliage decoration said to have 
been suggested by this plant, and much 
employed in Roman and later styles. 

Acapul'co, a seaport of Mexico, on the 
Pacific, with a capacious, well-sheltered har¬ 
bour; a coaling station for steamers, but 
with no great trade. Pop. 5000. 

Acar'ida, a division of the Arachnida, in¬ 
cluding the mites, ticks, and water-mites. 
See Mite. 

Acarna'nia, the most westerly portion of 
Northern Greece, together with ^Etolia now 
forming a nomarchy with a pop. of 138,444. 
The Acarnanians of ancient times were be¬ 
hind the other Greeks in civilization, living 
by robbery and piracy. 

Ac'arus, the genus to which the mite 
belongs. 

Acca'dians, the primitive inhabitants of 
Babylonia, who had descended from the 
mountainous region of Elam on the east, 
and to whom the Assyrians ascribed the 
origin of Chaldean civilization and writing. 
This race is believed to have belonged to 
the Turanian family, or to have been at 
any rate non-Semitic. What is known of 
them has been learned from the cuneiform 
inscriptions. 

Acceleration, the increase of velocity 
which a body acquires when continually 
acted upon by a force in the direction of its 
motion. A body falling from a height is 
one of the most common instances of accel¬ 
eration.— Acceleration of the moon, the 
increase of the moon's mean angular velo¬ 
city about the earth, the moon now moving 
rather faster than in ancient times. This 
phenomenon has not been fully explained, 
but it is known to be partly owing to the 
slow process of diminution which the eccen¬ 
tricity of the earth’s orbit is undergoing, 
and from w'hich there results a slight dimi¬ 
nution of the sun’s influence on the moon’s 
motions.— Diurnal acceleration of the 
fixed stars, the apparent greater diurnal 
motion of the stars than of the sun, arising 
from the fact that the sun’s apparent yearly 
motion takes place in a direction contrary 
to that of his apparent daily motion. The 
stars thus seem each day to anticipate the 
sun by nearly 3 minutes 56 seconds of 
mean time. 












ACCENT-ACCOMMODATION LADDER. 


Ac'cent, a term used in several senses. In 
English it commonly denotes superior stress 
or force of voice upon certain syllables of 
words, which distinguishes them from the 
other syllables. Many English words, as 
as'pi-ra"tion, have two accents, a secondary 
and primary, the latter being the fuller or 
stronger. Some words, as in-com'pre-hen'- 
si-biTi-ty, have two secondary or subor¬ 
dinate accents. When the full accent falls 
on a vowel, that vowel has its long sound, 
as in vo'cal; but when it falls on a conso¬ 
nant, the preceding vowel is short, as in 
bob'it. This kind of accent alone regulates 
English verse as contrasted with Latin or 
Greek verse, in which the metre depended 
on quantity or length of syllables. In books 
on elocution three marks or accents are 
generally made use of, the first or acute ( / ) 
showing when the voice is to be raised, the 
second or grave ( v ), when it is to be de¬ 
pressed, and the third or circumflex ( A ) 
when the vowel is to be uttered with an 
undulating sound. In some languages there 
is no such distinct accent as in English (or 
German), and this seems to be now the case 
with French.—In music, accent is the stress 
or emphasis laid upon certain notes of a bar. 
The first note of a bar has the strongest 
accent, but weaker accents are given to the 
first notes of subordinate parts of the bars, 
as to the third, fifth, and seventh in a bar 
of eight quavers. 

Accentor (Accentor modular is), or Hedge 
Accentor, genus of seed and insect-eating 
passerine birds. See Hedge-warbler. 

Acceptance, in law, the act by which a 
person binds himself to pay a bill of exchange 
drawn upon him. (See Bill.) No accep¬ 
tance is valid unless made in writing on the 
bill, but an acceptance may be either abso¬ 
lute or conditional, that is, stipulating some 
alteration in the amount or date of payment, 
or some condition to be fulfilled previous to 
payment. 

Accessary, or Accessory, in law, a per¬ 
son guilty of an offence by connivance or 
participation, either before or after the act 
committed, as by command, advice, conceal¬ 
ment, &c. An accessary before the fact is 
one who procures or counsels another to 
commit a crime, and is not present at its 
commission; an accessary after the fact is 
one who, knowing a felony to have been 
committed, gives assistance of any kind to 
the felon so as to hinder him from being ap¬ 
prehended, tried, or suffering punishment. 
An accessary before the fact may be tried 


and punished in all respects as if he were 
the principal. In high treason, all who 
participate are regarded as principals. 

Accidentals, notes introduced in the 
course of a piece of music in a different key 
from that in which the passage they occur 
is principally written. They are represented 
by the sign of a sharp, flat, or natural imme¬ 
diately before the note which is to be raised 
or lowered. 

Accipitres (ak-sip'i-trez), the name given 
by Linnseus and Cuvier to the rapacious 
birds now usually called Raptores (which 
see). 

Acclimatization, the process of accustom¬ 
ing plants or animals to live and propagate 
in a climate different from that to which 
they are indigenous, or the change which the 
constitution of an animal or plant under¬ 
goes under new climatic conditions, in the 
direction of adaptation to those conditions. 
The systematic study of acclimatization has 
only been entered upon in very recent times, 
and the little progress that has been made 
in it has been more in the direction of 
formulating anticipative, if not arbitrary 
hypotheses, than of actual discovery and 
acquisition of facts. The term is sometimes 
applied to the case of animals or plants 
taking readily to a new country with a 
climate and other circumstances similar to 
what they have left, such as European 
animals and plants in America and New 
Zealand: but this is more properly natura¬ 
lization than acclimatization. 

Accolade (ak o-lad'; French, from L. 
ad, to, collum, the neck), the ceremony used 
in conferring knighthood, anciently consist¬ 
ing either in the embrace given by the per¬ 
son who conferred the honour of knighthood 
or in a light blow on the neck or the cheek, 
latterly consisting in the ceremony of strik¬ 
ing the candidate with a naked sword. 

Accol'ti, Benedetto, an Italian lawyer, 
born at Arezzo in Tuscany in 1415, died 
1466. He was secretary to the Florentine 
republic, 1459, and author of a work on the 
Crusades which is said to have furnished 
Tasso with matter for his Jerusalem De¬ 
livered. 

Accommodation Bill, a bill of exchange 
drawn and accepted to raise money on, and 
not given, like a genuine bill of exchange, in 
payment of a debt, but merely intended to 
accommodate the drawer: colloquially called 
a wind bill and a kite. 

Accommodation Ladder, a light ladder 
hung over the side of a ship at the gangway 

20 



ACHALZICH. 


ACCOMPANIMENT 


to facilitate ascending from, or descending 
to, boats. 

Accom'paniment, in music, is that part of 
music which serves for the support of the 
principal melody (solo or obligato part). This 
can be executed either by many instruments, 
by a few, or by a single one. 

Accor'dion, a keyed musical wind-instru¬ 
ment similar to the concertina, being in the 
form of a small box, containing a number 
of metallic reeds fixed at one of their ex¬ 
tremities, the sides of the box forming a 
folding apparatus which acts as a bellows 
to supply the wind, and thus set the reeds 
in vibration, and produce the notes both of 
melody and harmony. 

Ac'crah, a British settlement in Africa, in 
a swampy situation, on the Gold Coast, 
about 75 miles east of Cape Coast Castle. 
Exports gold-dust, ivory, gums, palm-oil; 
imports cottons, cutlery, firearms, &c. 

Ac'crington, a municipal bor. of Eng¬ 
land, Lancashire, 5 miles east of Blackburn, 
with large cotton factories, print-works, and 
bleach-fields, and coal-mines adjacent. Bop. 
38,603. Also a pari. div. of the county. 

Accumulator, a name applied to a kind 
of electric battery by means of which electric 
energy can be stored and rendered portable. 
In the usual form each battery forms a 
cylindrical leaden vessel, containing alter¬ 
nate sheets of metallic lead and minium 
wrapped in felt and rolled into a spiral 
wetted with acidulated water. On being 
charged with electricity the energy may be 
preserved till required for use. 

Accusative Case, in Latin and some other 
languages, the term applied to the case which 
designates the object to which the action of 
any verb is immediately directed, corres¬ 
ponding, generally speaking, to the objective 
in English. 

Aceph'ala.in zoology,the headless Mollusca 
or those which want a distinct head, corres¬ 
ponding to those that have bivalve shells 
and are also called Lamellibranchiata. 

A'cer, the genus of plants (natural order 
Aceracece) to which belong the maples. 

Acerra (a-cher'a), a town in South Italy, 
9 miles north-east of Naples, the see of a 
bishop, in a fertile but unhealthy region. 
Pop. 15,165. 

Acetab'ulum, an anatomical term applied 
to any cup-like cavity, as that of a bone to 
receive the protuberant end of another bone, 
the cavity, for instance, that receives the 
end of the thigh-bone. 

Acetates (as'e-tiits), salts of acetic acid. 

21 


The acetates of most commercial or manu¬ 
facturing importance are those of aluminium 
and iron, which are used in calico-printing; 
of copper, which as verdigris is used as a 
colour; and of lead, best known as sugar of 
lead. The acetates of potassium, sodium, 
and ammonium, of iron, zinc, and lead, and 
the acetate of morphia, are employed in 
medicine. 

Acet'ic Acid, an acid produced by the oxi¬ 
dation of common alcohol, and of many 
other organic substances. Pure acetic acid 
has a very sour taste and pungent smell, 
burns the skin, and is poisonous. From 
freezing at ordinary temperatures (58°or 59°) 
it is known as glacial acetic acid. Vinegar 
is simply dilute acetic acid, and is prepared 
by subjecting wine or weak spirit to the ac¬ 
tion of the air; also from malt which has 
undergone vinous fermentation. Acetic acid, 
both concentrated and dilute, is largely used 
in the arts, in medicine, and for domestic 
purposes. See Vinegar. 

Acet'ic Ethers, compounds consisting of 
acetates of alcohol radicals. Common acetic 
ether is a colourless, volatile fluid, and is a 
flavouring constituent in many wines. It is 
made artificially by distilling a mixture of 
alcohol, oil of vitriol, and acetate of potash. 

Achseans (a-ke'anz), one of the four races 
into which the ancient Greeks were divided. 
In early times they inhabited a part of Nor¬ 
thern Greece and of the Peloponnesus. They 
are represented by Homer as a brave and 
warlike people, and so distinguished were 
they that he usually calls the Greeks in 
general Achaeans. Latterly they were set¬ 
tled in the district of the Peloponnesus, 
called after them Achaia, and forming a 
narrow belt of coast on the south side of 
the Gulf of Corinth. From very early 
times a confederacy or league existed among 
the twelve towns of this region. After 
the death of Alexander the Great it was 
broken up, but was revived again, B.c. 280, 
and from this time grew in power till it 
spread over the whole Peloponnesus. It 
was finally dissolved by the Romans, B.c. 
147, and after this the whole of Greece, 
except Thessaly, was called Achaia or 
Achaea. Achaia with Elis now forms a 
nomarchy of the kingdom of Greece. Pop. 
181,632. 

Achaemenidse (ak-e-men'i-de), a dynasty 
of ancient Persian kings, being that to 
which the great Cyrus belonged. 

Achaia (a-ka'ya). See Achceans. 

Achalzich (a-Aal'tse/i), a fortified town 



ACHARD-ACHILLES. 


of Russia, in Transcaucasia, 70 miles east 
of the Black Sea. Pop. 18,000. 

Achard (aA'art), Franz Karl, a German 
chemist, born 1753, died 1821, principally 
known by his invention (1789-1800) of a 
process for manufacturing sugar from beet¬ 
root. 

Achard (a-shar), Louis Amedee Eugene, 
born 1814, died 1875, French journalist, 
novelist, and playwright. Best known as a 
novelist; wrote the novels Belle Rose, La 
Chasse royale, Chateaux en Espagne, Robe 
de Nessus, Chaines de fer, &c. 

Achates (a-ka'tez), a companion of zEneas 
in his wanderings subsequent to his flight 
from Troy. He is always distinguished in 
Virgil's HSneid by the epit’iet fidus, ’faith¬ 
ful,’ and has become typical of a faithful 
friend and companion. 

Acheen or Atchin (a-chen'), a native state 
of Sumatra, with capital of same name, in 
the north-western extremity of the island, 
now nominally under Dutch administration. 
Though largely mountainous, it has also 
undulating tracts and low fertile plains. 
By treaty with Britain the Dutch were pre¬ 
vented from extending their territory in 
Sumatra by conquest; but this obstacle 
being removed, in 1871 they proceeded to 
occupy Acheen. It was not till 1879, 
however, after a great waste of blood and 
treasure, that they obtained a general 
recognition of their authority. But they 
have not been able to establish it firmly, 
and in 1885 were forced to evacuate part of 
the Acheenese territory, with considerable 
loss in men and guns. In the seventeenth 
century Acheen was a powerful state, and 
carried on hostilities successfully against the 
Portuguese, but its influence decreased with 
the increase of the Dutch power. The prin¬ 
cipal exports are rice and pepper. Area, 
19,000 sq. miles; population, 600,000. 

Aehelous (ak-e-lo'us), now Aspropotamo, 
the largest river of Greece, rising on Mount 
Pindus, separating iEtolia and Acarnania, 
and falling into the Ionian Sea. Aehelous 
was the river-god of Greece. 

Achenbach (a'Aen-bach), Andreas, is a 
distinguished and prolific German landscape 
and marine painter, born in 1815.— Oswald 
Achenbach, born 1827, brother of above, is 
also a distinguished landscape painter. Both 
are of the Diisseldorf school. 

Achene, Achenium (a-ken', a-ke'ni-um), in 
botany, a small, dry carpel containing a single 
seed, the pericarp of which is closely applied 
but separable, and which does not open 



Achene—Lettuce and 
Ranunculus. 


when ripe. It is either solitary, or several 
achenia may be placed on a common recep¬ 
tacle as in the buttercup. 

Acheron (ak'e-ron), the 
ancient name of several 
rivers in Greece and 
Italy, all of which were 
connected by legend with 
the lower world. The 
principal was a river in 
Epirus, which passes through Lake Acher- 
usia and flows into the Ionian Sea. Homer 
speaks of Acheron as a river of the lower 
world, and late Greelc writers use the name 
to designate the lower world. 

Ach'iar, Atch'ar, an Indian condiment 
made of the young shoots of the bamboo 
pickled. 

Achievement (a-chev'ment), in heraldry, 
a term which may be applied to the shield 
of armorial bearings generally, but is usually 
applied to the shield or hatchment which is 
affixed to the house of persons lately de¬ 
ceased, to denote their rank and station. 

Achill (ak'il), or Eagle Island, the 
largest island on the Irish coast; separated 
from the mainland of Connaught by a nar¬ 
row sound; area, 51,521 acres, mostly irre¬ 
claimable bog. The chief occupation of the 
natives is fishing. Pop. 4719. 

Achillae'a, the milfoil genus of plants. 

Achilles (a-kil'ez), a Greek legendary 
hero, the chief character in Homer’s Iliad. 
His father was Peleus, ruler of Phthia in 
Thessaly, his mother the sea-goddess Thetis. 
When only six years of age he was able to 
overcome lions and bears. His guardian, 
Cheiron the Centaur, having declared that 
Troy could not be taken without his aid, 
his mother, fearing for his safety, disguised 
him as a girl, and introduced hitn among 
the daughters of Lycomedes of Scyros. 
Her desire for his safety made her also try 
to make him invulnerable when a child by 
anointing him with ambrosia, and again by 
dipping him in the river Styx, from which 
he came out proof against wounds, all but 
the heel, by which she held him. His place 
of concealment was discovered by Odysseus 
(Ulysses), and he promised his assistance 
to the Greeks against Troy. Accompanied 
by his close friend, Patroclus, he joined the 
expedition with a body of followers (Myr¬ 
midons) in fifty ships, and occupied nine 
years in raids upon the towns neighbouring 
to Troy, after which the siege proper com¬ 
menced. On being deprived of his prize, the 
maiden Brisefs, by Agamemnon, he refused 



ACHILLES’ TENDON-ACLINIC LINE. 


to take any further part in the war, and 
disaster attended the Greeks. Patroclus 
now persuaded Achilles to allow him to lead 
the Myrmidons to battle dressed in his 
armour, and he having been slain by Hector, 
Achilles vowed revenge on the Trojans, and 
forgot his anger against the Greeks. He 
attacked the Trojans and drove them back 
to their walls, slaying them in great num¬ 
bers, chased Hector, who fled before him 
three times round the walls of Troy, slew 
him, and dragged his body at his chariot- 
wheels, but afterwards gave it up to Priam, 
who came in person to beg for it. He then 
performed the funeral rites of Patroclus, 
with which the Iliad closes. He was killed 
in a battle at the Scaean Gate of Troy by an 
arrow from the bow of Paris which struck 
his vulnerable heel. In discussions on the 
origin of the Homeric poems the term 
Achilleid is often applied to those books 
(i. viii. and xi.-xxii.) of the Iliad in which 
Achilles is prominent, and which some sup¬ 
pose to have formed the original nucleus of 
the poem. 

Achilles’ Tendon, Tendon of Achilles, 
the strong tendon which connects the muscles 
of the calf with the heel, and may be easily 
felt with the hand. The origin of name will 
be understood from above article. 

Achilles Tatius (a-kil'ez ta'shi-us), a 
Greek romance writer of the fifth century 
a.d., belonging to Alexandria; wrote a love 
story called Leucippe and Cleitophon. 

Achimenes (a-kim'e-nez), a genus of tro¬ 
pical American plants, with scaly under¬ 
ground tubers, nat. order Gesneracese, now 
cultivated in European green-houses on ac¬ 
count of their ornamental character. 

Achlamydeous (ak-la-mid'i-us), in botany, 
wanting the floral envelopes, that is, having 
neither calyx nor corolla, as the willow. 

Achor (a'kor), adisease of infants, in which 
the head, the face, and often the neck and 
breast become incrusted with thin, yellow¬ 
ish or greenish scabs, arising from minute, 
whitish pustules, which discharge a viscid 
fluid. 

Achromatic (Gr. a, priv., and chroma , 
chromatos, colour), in optics, transmitting 
colourless light, that is, not decomposed 
into the primary colours, though having 
passed through a refracting medium. A 
single convex lens does not give an image 
free from the prismatic colours, because the 
rays of different colour making up white 
light are not equally refrangible, and thus 
do not all come to a focus together, the 

23 


violet, for instance, being nearest the lens, 
the red farthest off. If such a lens of 
crown-glass, however, is combined with a 
concave lens of flint-glass—the curvatures 
of both being properly adjusted — as the 
two materials have somewhat different op¬ 
tical properties, the latter will neutralize 
the chromatic aberration of the former, and 
a satisfactory image will be produced. 
Telescopes, microscopes, &c., in which the 
glasses are thus composed are called achro¬ 
matic. 

Acid (Latin, acidus, sour), a name popu¬ 
larly applied to a number of compounds, 
solid, liquid, and gaseous, having more or 
less the qualities of vinegar (itself a diluted 
form of acetic acid), the general properties 
assigned to them being a tart, sour taste, 
the power of changing vegetable blues into 
reds, of decomposing chalk and marble with 
effervescence, and of being in various de¬ 
grees neutralized by alkalies. An acid has 
been defined as a substance containing hy¬ 
drogen, which hydrogen is in whole or in 
part replaceable by a metal when the metal 
is presented in the form of a hydrate; being 
monobasic , dibasic, or tribasic , according to 
the number of hydrogen atoms replaced. 

Acierage (a'se-er-aj), (Fr. acier, steel), a 
process by which an engraved copper-plate 
or an electrotype from an engraved plate of 
steel or copper has a film of iron deposited 
over its surface by electricity in order to 
protect the engraving from wear in printing. 
By this means an electrotype of a fine en¬ 
graving, which, if printed directly from the 
copper, would not yield 500 good impres¬ 
sions, can be made to yield 3000 or more; 
and when the film of iron becomes so worn 
as to reveal any part of the copper, it may 
be removed and a fresh coating deposited so 
that 20,000 good impressions may be got. 

Acipenser (as-i-pen'ser), the genus of car¬ 
tilaginous ganoid fishes to which the sturgeon 
belongs. 

Aci Reale (a'che ra-a'la), a seaport of 
Sicily, north-east of Catania, a well-built 
town, with a trade in corn, wine, fruit, &c. 
Pop. 22,431. 

A'cis, according to Ovid, a beautiful shep¬ 
herd of Sicily, loved by Galatea, and crushed 
to death by his rival the Cyclops Polyphe¬ 
mus. His blood, flowing from beneath the 
rock which crushed him, was changed into 
a river bearing his name. 

Aclin'ic Line (Gr. priv. a, Mind, to in¬ 
cline), the magnetic equator, an irregular 
curve in the neighbourhood of the terres- 



ACNE-ACOUSTICS. 


trial equator, where the magnetic needle 
balances itself horizontally, having no dip. 

Acne (ak'ne), a skin disease, consisting 
of small hard pimples, usually on the face, 
caused by congestion of the follicles of the 
skin. 

Acolytes (ak'o-lits), in the ancient Latin 
and Greek Churches, persons of ecclesias¬ 
tical rank next in order below the sub¬ 
deacons, whose office it was to attend to the 
officiating priest. The name is still retained 
in the Roman Church. 

Aconcagua (a-lcon-ka'gwa), a province, a 
river, and a mountain of Chili. The peak 
of Aconcagua, rising to the height of 22,420 
feet (according to a recent estimate, 22,860), 
is one of the highest summits of the western 
hemisphere. Area of prov., 6224 sq. miles. 
Pop. 133,830. Capital, San Felipe. 

Ac'onite ( Aconitum ), a genus of hardy 
herbaceous plants, nat. order Ranunculaceae, 
represented by the well-known wolf’s-bane 
or monk’s-hood, and remarkable for their 
poisonous properties and medicinal qualities, 
being used internally as well as externally 
in rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, &c. See 
next article. 

Aconitine, an alkaloid extracted from 
monk’s-hood and some other species of 
aconite; used medicinally, though a virulent 
poison. 

Aconquija (a-kon-ke'Aa), a range of 
mountains in the Argentine Republic; the 
name also of a single peak, 17,000 feet high. 

A'corn, the fruit of the different kinds of 
oak. The acorn-cups of one species are 
brought from the Levant under the name 
of valonia, and used in tanning. 

Acorn-shell. See Balanus. 

Ac'orus, a genus of plants, including the 
sweet-flag. See Sweet-flag and Calamus. 

Acos'ta, Gabriel, afterwards Uriel, a 
Portuguese of Jewish descent, born 1590, 
died by his own hand 1647. Brought up a 
Christian, he afterwards embraced Judaism. 
Having gone to Amsterdam, where he at¬ 
tacked the practices of the Jews, and de¬ 
nied the divine mission of Moses, he suffered 
much persecution at the hands of the Jews. 
He left an autobiography, published in 1687, 
under the title Exemplar Vitas Humanas. 

Acotyle'dons, plants not furnished with 
cotyledons or seed-lobes. They include 
ferns, mosses, sea-weeds, &c., and are also 
called flowerless plants or cryptogams. 

Acoustics (a-kou'stiks), the science of 
sound. It teaches the cause, nature, and 
phenomena of such vibrations of elastic 


bodies as affect the organ of hearing; the 
manner in which sound is produced, its 
transmission through air and other media, 
the doctrine of reflected sound or echoes, 
the properties and effects of different sounds, 
including musical sounds or notes, and the 
structure and action of the organ of hear¬ 
ing, &c. The propagation of sound is an¬ 
alogous to that of light, both being due to 
vibrations which produce successive waves, 
and Newton was the first to show that its 
propagation through any medium depended 
upon the elasticity of that medium. Regard¬ 
ing the intensity, reflection, and refraction 
of sound, much the same rules apply as in 
light. In ordinary cases of hearing the 
vibrating medium is air, but all substances 
capable of vibrating may be employed to 
propagate and convey sound. When a bell 
is struck its vibrations are communicated to 
the particles of air surrounding it, and from 
these to particles outside them, until they 
reach the ear of the listener. The intensity 
of sound varies inversely as the square of the 
distance of the body sounding from the ear. 
Sound travels through the air at the rate of 
about 1090 feet per second; through water at 
the rate of about 4700 feet. Sounds may be 
musical or non-musical. A musical sound 
is caused by a regular series of exactly similar 
pulses succeeding each other at precisely 
equal intervals of time. If these condi¬ 
tions are not fulfilled the sound is a noise. 
Musical sounds are comparatively simple, 
and are combined to give pleasing sensations 
according to easy numerical relations. The 
loudness of a note depends on the degree to 
which it affects the ear; the pitch of a note 
depends on the number of vibrations to the 
second which produce the note; the timbre, 
quality, or character of a note depends on 
the body or bodies whose vibrations produce 
the sound, and is due to the form of the 
paths of vibrating particles. The gamut is 
a series of eight notes, which are called by 
the names Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do 2 , 
and the numbers of vibrations which produce 
these notes are respectively proportional to 
24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48. The numerical 
value of the interval between any two notes 
is given by dividing one of the above num¬ 
bers corresponding to the higher note by the 
number corresponding to the lower note. 
The intervals from Do to each of the others 
are called a second, a major third, a fourth, 
a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and an octave re¬ 
spectively. The interval from La to Doj is 
a minor third. An interval of f is a major 

U 



ACQUI 


ACTINIA. 


tone; V is a minor tone; is called a limma. 
The properties of sound were mathematically 
investigated by Bacon and Galileo, but it 
remained for Newton, Lagrange, Euler, La¬ 
place, Helmholtz, &c., to bring the science to 
its present state. 

Acqui (ak'we), a town of Northern Italy, 
18 miles s.s.w. of Alessandria, a bishop’s 
see. It has warm sulphurous baths, which 
were known to the Romans, and which yet 
draw a great many visitors. Pop. 6481. 

Acre, a standard British measure of land, 
also used in the colonies and the United 
States. The imperial statute acre consists of 
4840 square yards, divided into 4 roods. The 
old Scotch acre contains 6146’8 square yards, 
the old Irish acre 7840 square yards. 

Acre (a'ker) (ancient A echo and Ptole- 
mats), a seaport of Syria, in Northern Pales¬ 
tine, on the Bay of Acre, early a place of 
great strength and importance. Taken 
from the Saracens under Saladin in 1191 
by Richard I. of England and Philip of 
France ; bravely defended by the Turks 
assisted by Sir Sidney Smith in 1799 against 
Napoleon; in 1832, taken by Ibrahim Pasha; 
in 1840, bombarded by a British, Austrian, 
and Turkish fleet, and restored to the Sultan 
of Turkey. Pop. 5000. 

Acri (a'kre), a town of S. Italy, prov. of 
Cosenza. Pop. 10,000. 

Ac'rita (Gr. akritos, undistinguishable, 
doubtful), a name sometimes given to the 
animals otherwise called Protozoa. 

Acroceph'ali, tribes of men distinguished 
by pyramidal or high skulls. 

Acrocerau'nia, now Cape Glossa or Lin- 
yuetta, a promontory of Western Greece, in 
Epirus, running into the Adriatic. 

Acrocorin'thus, a steep rock in Greece, 
nearly 1900 feet high, overhanging ancient 
Corinth, and on which stood the acropolis 
or citadel, the sacred fountain of Pirene 
being also here. This natural fortress has 
proved itself of importance in the modern 
history of Greece. 

Ac'rogens (-jenz), lit. summit-growers, a 
term applied to the ferns, mosses, and 
lichens (cryptogams), as growing by ex¬ 
tension upwards, in contradistinction to 
endogens and exogens. 

AcTolith, an early form of Greek statuary 
in which the head, hands, and feet only were 
of stone, the trunk of the figure being of 
wood draped or gilded. 

Acrop'olis (Gr. akros, high, and polis, 
a city), the citadel or chief place of a 
Grecian city, usually on an eminence corn- 

25 


manding the town. That of Athens con¬ 
tained some of the finest buildings in the 
world, such as the Parthenon, Erechtheum, 
&c. 

Acros'tic, a poem of which the first or last, 
or certain other letters of the line, taken in 
order, form some name, motto, or sentence. 
A poem of which both first and last letters 
are thus arranged is called a double acros¬ 
tic. In Hebrew poetry, the term is given 
to a poem, of which the initial letters of 
the lines or stanzas, were made to run over 
the letters of the alphabet in their order, 
as in Psalm cxix.—Acrostics have been 
much used in complimentary verses, the 
initial letters giving the name of the person 
eulogized. 

Act, in special senses: (1) In dramatic 
poetry, one of the principal divisions of a 
drama, in which a definite and coherent por¬ 
tion of the plot is represented; generally 
subdivided into smaller portions called 
scenes. The Greek dramas were not divided 
into acts. The dictum that a drama should 
consist of five acts was first formally laid 
down by Horace, and is generally adhered 
to by modern dramatists in tragedy. In 
comedy no such distinction is observed.— 

(2) Something formally done by a legislative 
or judicial body; a statute or law passed.— 

(3) In universities, a thesis maintained in 
public by a candidate for a degree. See 
Act of God , of Parliament, of Settlement, &c. 

Acta Diur'na (L., proceedings of the day), 
a daily Roman newspaper which appeared 
under both the republic and the empire. 

Actse'a. See Baneberry. 

Actse'on, in Greek mythology, a great 
hunter,turned into a stag by Artemis (Liana) 
for looking on her when she was bathing, 
and torn to pieces by his own dogs. 

Acta Erudito'rum(L.,actsof thelearned), 
the first literary journal that appeared in 
Germany (1682-1782). Among the contrib¬ 
utors, the most distinguished was Leibnitz. 

Acta Sanctorum (L., acts of the saints), 
a name applied to all collections of accounts 
of ancient martyrs and saints, both of the 
Greek and Roman Churches, more particu¬ 
larly to the valuable collection begun by 
John Bolland, a Jesuit of Antwerp in 1643, 
and which, being continued by other divines 
of the same order ( Bollandists ), now extends 
to sixty volumes, the lives following each 
other in the order of the calendar. 

Actinia, the genus of animals to which 
the typical sea-anemones belong. See Sea- 
anemone , 



ACTINISM 

Ac'tinism, the property of those rays of 
light which produce chemical changes, as 
in photography, in contradistinction to the 
light rays and heat rays. The actinic pro¬ 
perty or force begins among the green rays, 
is strongest in the violet rays, and extends 
a long way beyond the visible spectrum. 

Actin'olite, a mineral nearly allied to 
hornblende. 

Actinom'eter, an instrument for measur¬ 
ing the intensity of the sun’s actinic rays. 
See Actinism. 

Actinozo'a (lit. ray-animals), a class of 
animals belonging to the sub-kingdom 
Coelenterata, and including sea-anemones, 
corals, &c., all having rayed tentacles round 
the mouth. 

Action, the mode of seeking redress at 
law for any wrong, injury, or deprivation. 
Actions are divided into civil and criminal, 
the former again being divided into real, 
personal, and mixed. 

Ac'tium, a promontory on the western 
coast of Northern Greece, not far from the 
entrance of the Ambracian Gulf (Gulf of 
Arta), now called La Punta, memorable on 
account of the naval victory gained here by 
Octavianus (afterwards the Emperor Au¬ 
gustus) over Antony and Cleopatra, Sep¬ 
tember 2, B.c. 31, in sight of their armies, 
encamped on the opposite shores of the 
Ambracian Gulf. Soon after the beginning 
of the battle Cleopatra fled with sixty 
Egyptian ships, and Antony basely followed 
her, and fled with her to Egypt. The de¬ 
serted fleet was not overcome without mak¬ 
ing a brave resistance. Antony’s land forces 
soon went over to the enemy, and the 
Roman world fell to Octavius. 

Act of God, a legal term defined as ‘a 
direct, violent, sudden, and irresistible act 
of nature, which could not, by any reason¬ 
able cause, have been foreseen or resisted.’ 
No one can be legally called upon to make 
good loss so arising. 

Act of Parliament, a law or statute pro¬ 
ceeding from the parliament of the United 
Kingdom passed in both houses, and having 
received the royal assent. Before it is passed 
it is a bill and not an act. Acts are either 
public or private, the former affecting the 
whole community, the latter only special 
persons and private concerns. The whole 
body of public acts constitutes the statute 
law. An act of parliament can only be 
altered or repealed by the authority of par¬ 
liament. Acts are usually cited in this way, 
‘13 and 14 Viet. c. (or chap.) 21/ which 


— ACTOR. 

means the 21st act in succession passed in 
year 13th-14th of the queen’s reign (that 
is, 1850). Short titles, such as ‘theMerchant 
Shipping Act, 1854,’are also used. Up to the 
time of Edward I. acts of parliament were 
in Latin; then French was introduced, and 
for some time was exclusively employed. 
It was not till Henry VII. that all acts 
were in English. 

Act of Settlement, an act passed by the 
English parliament in 1700, by which the 
succession to the throne of the three 
kingdoms, in the event of King William 
and Queen Anne dying without issue, was 
settled on the Princess Sophia, electress of 
Hanover, and the heirs of her body being 
Protestants. The Princess Sophia was the 
youngest daughter of Elizabeth, queen of 
Bohemia, daughter of James I. By this 
act George I., son of the Princess Sophia, 
succeeded to the crown on the death of 
Queen Anne.—Another act of settlement 
was, that by which, under Cromwell’s 
government, a new allotment was made of 
almost all landed property in Ireland, in 
1652. 

Act of Toleration, an act of parliament 
passed in 1689, by which Protestant dis¬ 
senters from the Church of England, on 
condition of their taking the oaths of su¬ 
premacy and allegiance, and repudiating the 
doctrine of transubstantiation, were relieved 
from the restrictions under which they had 
formerly lain with regard to the exercise of 
their religion according to their own forms. 

Act of Uniformity, an English act passed 
in 1662, enjoining upon all ministers to use 
the Book of Common Prayer on pain of 
forfeiture of their liv¬ 
ings. See Nonconfor¬ 
mists. 

Acton, a kind of 
padded or quilted vest 
or tunic formerly worn 
under a coat of mail 
to save the body from 
bruises, or used by itself 
as a defensive garment. 

Jackets of leather or 
other material plated 
with mail were also so 
called. Gambeson was 
an equivalent term. 

Acton, a name of 
various places in Eng¬ 
land, one of them a western suburb of 
London, with a pop. 1891, of 24,207. 

Actor, one who represents some part or 
26 



Quilted Acton of the fif¬ 
teenth century. 




ADAM AND EVE. 


ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 


character on the stage. Actresses were un¬ 
known to the Greeks and Romans in the 
earliest times, men or boys always perform¬ 
ing the female parts. They appeared under 
the Roman empire, however. Charles II. 
first encouraged the' public appearance of 
actresses in England; in Shakspere’s time 
there were none. See Drama. 

Acts of the Apostles, one of the books 
of the New Testament, written in Greek by 
St. Luke, probably in a.d. 63 or 64. It 
embraces a period of about thirty years, 
beginning immediately after the resurrec¬ 
tion, and extending to the second year of 
the imprisonment of St. Paul in Rome. 
Very little information is given regarding 
any of the apostles, excepting St. Peter and 
St. Paul, and the accounts of them are far 
from being complete. It describes the 
gathering of the infant church; the fulfil¬ 
ment of the promise of Christ to his apostles 
in the descent of the Holy Ghost; the choice 
of Matthias in the place of Judas, the be¬ 
trayer; the testimony of the apostles to the 
resurrection of Jesus in their discourses; 
their preaching in Jerusalem and in Judea, 
and afterwards to the Gentiles; the conver¬ 
sion of Paul, his pseaching in Asia Minor, 
Greece, and Italy, his miracles and labours. 

Ac'tuaxy, an accountant whose business 
is to make the necessary computations in 
regard to a basis for life assurance, annuities, 
reversions, &c. 

Acu'leus, in botany, a prickle, or sharp- 
pointed process of the epidermis, as distin¬ 
guished from a thorn or spine, which is of a 
woody nature. 

Acupress'ure, a means of arresting bleed¬ 
ing from a cut artery introduced by Sir 
James Simpson in 1859, and consisting in 
compressing the artery above the orifice, that 
is, on the side nearest the heart, with the 
middle of a needle (L. acus, a needle) intro¬ 
duced through the tissues. 

Acupunc'ture, a surgical operation, con¬ 
sisting in the insertion of needles into cer¬ 
tain parts of the body for alleviating pain, 
or for the cure of different species of rheu¬ 
matism, neuralgia, eye diseases, &c. It is 
easily performed, gives little pain, causes 
neither bleeding nor inflammation,and seems 
at times of surprising efficacy. 

Adagio (Italian; a-da/jo), a musical 
term, expressing a slow time, slower than 
andante and less so than largo. 

Adal', a country in Africa, east of Abys¬ 
sinia and north-westward of Tajurrah Bay, 
inhabited by a dark-brown race of same 

27 


name, of nomadic habits, Mohammedans in 
religion ; towns Aussa and Tajurrah. Part 
of the coast here is held by the French. 

Ad'albert of Prague, called ‘ the apostle 
of the Prussians,’ son of a Bohemian noble¬ 
man, born about 955, appointed Bishop of 
Prague in 983, laboured in vain among the 
heathenish Bohemians, resolved to convert 
the pagans of Prussia, but was murdered in 
the attempt in 997. 

Ada'lia, a seaport on the south coast of 
Asia Minor. Pop. 13,000. 

Adam (a-dan), Adolphe Charles, a 
French composer, more especially of comic 
operas; born 1803, died 1856. Wrote 
Le postilion de Lonjumeau and Le Bras- 
seur de Preston (Brewer of Preston). 

Adam, Albrecht, a German painter of 
battles and animals; born 1786, died 1862. 
Three sons of his have also distinguished 
themselves as painters, especially Franz, 
born 1815, among whose best pictures are 
several representing scenes of the Franco- 
German war. 

Adam, Alexander, a Scottish classical 
scholar, born in 1741, became in 1768 rector 
of the High School of Edinburgh, and died 
there in 1809. Wrote Principles of Latin 
and English Grammar; Roman Antiqui¬ 
ties, a useful school-book; Summary of 
Geography and History; Classical Biog¬ 
raphy, &c. 

Adam, Robert, an eminent Scottish 
architect, was born in 1728, and was a son 
of William Adam, architect. He resided 
several years in Italy, visited Spalatro, in 
Dalmatia, and published a work on the 
ruined palace of Diocletian there. In con¬ 
junction with his brother James he was 
much employed by the English nobility and 
gentry in constructing modern and embel¬ 
lishing ancient mansions. Among their 
works are the Register House and the Uni¬ 
versity Buildings, Edinburgh, the Royal 
Infirmary, Glasgow, and the Adelphi Build¬ 
ings, London. Robert Adam died in 1792, 
and was buried in Westminster Abbey; his 
brother James died in 1794. 

Adam and Eve, the names given in 
Scripture to our first parents, an account 
of whom and their immediate descendants 
is given in the early chapters of Genesis. 
Cain, Abel, and Seth are all their sons that 
are mentioned by name; but we are told 
that they had other sons as well as daugh¬ 
ters, and that Adam finally died at the age 
of 930 years. There are numerous Rabbin¬ 
ical additions to the Scripture narrative of 



ADAM DE LA HALE-ADAMS. 


an extravagant character, such as the myth 
of Adam having a wife before Eve, named 
Lilith, who became the mother of giants and 
evil spirits. Other legends or inventions are 
contained in the Koran. 

Adam de la Hale, an early French writer 
and musician; born 1240, died 1287. His 
Jeu de Robin et de Marion may be re¬ 
garded as the first comic opera ever 
written. 

Ad'amant, an old name for the diamond; 
also used in a vague way to imply a sub¬ 
stance of impenetrable hardness. 

Adaman'tine Spar, a name of the mineral 
corundum or of a brownish variety of it. 

Adama'wa, a region of Central Africa, 
between lat. 6° and 10 J N., and Ion. 11° and 
17° E. ; also called Fumhina. Much of the 
surface is hilly or mountainous, Mount At- 
lantika being 9000 or 10,000 feet. The 
principal river is the Benue. A great part of 
the country is covered with thick forests. 
The inhabitants are industrious and intelli¬ 
gent. Slaves and ivory are the chief articles 
of trade. Chief town Yola. 

Ad'amiteS, a name of sects or religious 
bodies that have appeared at various times: 
so called because both men and women 
were said to appear naked in their assem¬ 
blies, either to imitate Adam in the state 
of innocence or to prove the control which 
they possessed over their passions. 

Adam'nan, St., born in Ireland about 
624, was elected abbot of Iona in 679, and 
died there about 703 or 704. He is best 
known from his Life of St. Columba. 

Adams, Mass., a prosperous manufac¬ 
turing village 20 miles from Pittsfield. 
Pop. in 1890, 9206. See North Adams. 

Ad'ams, Charles Francis, American 
litterateur and statesman, is a son of John 
Quincy Adams, and was born in 1807. 
His youthful years were spent in Europe, 
partly in England; but he finished his edu¬ 
cation at Harvard, and afterwards studied 
law. After serving some years in the 
Massachusetts legislature was elected to 
congress in 1858. In 1861 he was sent to 
England as American minister, and here 
he remained for seven years, performing the 
arduous duties of his office with the utmost 
tact and ability. He has edited a complete 
edition of his grandfather’s works in ten 
vols., with a life. He was one of the arbi¬ 
trators on the Alabama claims. Died 1886. 

Adams, John, second president of the 
United States, was born at Braintree (now 
Quincy), Massachusetts, 19th October, 1735, 


He was educated at Harvard University, 
and adopted the law as a profession. His 
attention was directed to politics by the 
question as to the right of the English par¬ 
liament to tax the colonies, and in 1765 he 
published some essays strongly opposed to 



John Adams, Second President of the United States. 


the claims of the mother country. As a 
member of the new American congress in 
1774, 1775, and 1776. he was strenuous in 
his opposition to the home government, and 
in organizing the various departments of 
the colonial government. On 13th May, 
1776, he seconded the motion for a de¬ 
claration of independence proposed by Lee 
of Virginia, and was appointed a member 
of committee to draw it up. The declara¬ 
tion was actually drawn up by Jefferson, 
but it was Adams who fought it through 
congress. In 1778 he went to France on a 
special mission, but soon came back and 
again returned, and for nine years resided 
abroad as representative of his country in 
France, Holland, and England. After tak¬ 
ing part in the peace negotiations he was 
appointed, in 1785, the first ambassador of 
the United States to the court of St. James. 
He was recalled in 1788, and in the same 
year elected vice-president of the republic 
under Washington. In 1792 he was re¬ 
elected vice-president, and at the following 
election in 1796 was chosen president in 
succession to Washington. The common¬ 
wealth was then divided into two parties, 
the federalists, who favoured aristocratic 
and were suspected of monarchic views, and 
the republicans. Adams adhered to the 

28 




ADAMS-ADAM’S PEAK. 


former party, with which his views of 
government had always been in accordance, 
but the real leader of the party was Hamil¬ 
ton, with whom Adams did not agree, and 
who tried to pi’event his election. His term 
of office proved a stormy one, which broke 
up and dissolved the federalist party. His 
re-election in 1800 was again opposed by the 
efforts of Hamilton, which ended in effect¬ 
ing the return of the republican candidate 
Jefferson. Thus it happened that when 
Adams retired from office his influence and 
popularity with both parties were at an end, 
and he sunk at once into the obscurity of 
private life. He had the consolation, how¬ 
ever, of living to see his son president. He 
died 4th July, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary 
of the declaration of independence, and on 
the same day as Jefferson. His works have 
been ably edited by his grandson Charles 
Francis Adams. 

Adams, John Couch, an English astro¬ 
nomer, born in 1819, studied at Cambridge, 
and was senior wrangler in 1843. His in¬ 
vestigations into the irregularities in the 
motion of the planet Uranus led him to the 
conclusion that they must be caused by 
another more distant planet, and the results 
of his labours were communicated in Sep¬ 
tember and October, 1845, to Professor 
Challis and Airy the astronomer royal. The 
French astronomer Leverrier had by this 
time been engaged in the same line of re¬ 
search, and had come to substantially the 
same results, which, being published in 1846, 
led to the actual discovery of the planet 
Neptune by Galle of Berlin. In 1858 Adams 
was Lowndean professor of astronomy and 
geometry at Cambridge. Died Jan. 24,1892. 

Adams, John Quincy, sixth president of 
the United States, son of John Adams, 
second president, was born 11th July, 1767. 
Accompanying his father to Europe he 
received part of his education there, but 
graduated at Harvard in 1788. Having 
adopted the legal profession, in 1791 he 
was admitted to the bar. He now began 
to take an active interest in politics, and 
some letters that he wrote having attracted 
general attention, in 1794 Washington ap¬ 
pointed him minister to the Hague. He 
afterwards was sent to Portugal, and by his 
father to Berlin. In 1798 he received 
a commission to negotiate a treaty of com¬ 
merce with Sweden. On the accession of 
Jefferson to the presidency in 1801 he was 
recalled. The federalist party (that of his 
father), which was now declining, had suffi- 

29 


cient influence in Massachusetts to elect 
him to the senate in 1803. On an important 
question of foreign policy, that of embargo, 
he abandoned his party, and resigned his 
seat on this account. He was appointed 
to the professorship of rhetoric at Cam¬ 
bridge, which he held from 1806 to 1809. 
In 1809 he went as ambassador to Russia. 
He assisted in negotiating the peace of 1814 
with England, and was afterwards appointed 
resident minister at London. Under Mon¬ 
roe as president he was secretary of state, 
and at the expiration of Monroe’s double 
term of office he succeeded him in the pre¬ 
sidency (1825). He was not very successful 
as president, and at the end of his term 
(1829) he was not re-elected. In 1831 he 
was returned to congress by Massachusetts, 
and continued to represent this state till 
his death, his efforts being now chiefly on 
behalf of the abolitionist party. He died 
23d February, 1848. 

Adams, Samuel, an American statesman, 
second cousin of President John Adams, 
was born in Boston, Sept. 27th, 1722, and 
was educated at Harvard College. He 
early devoted himself to politics, and in 
connection with the dispute between Ame¬ 
rica and the mother counti’y he showed 
himself one of the most unwearied, efficient, 
and disinterested assertors of American 
freedom and independence. He was one 
of the signers of the declaration of 1776, 
which he laboured most indefatigably to 
bring forward. He sat in congress eight 
years, in 1789-94 was lieutenant-governor 
of Massachusetts, in 1794-97 governor, 
when he retired from public life. He died 
Oct. 2, 1803. 

Adam’s Apple, the popular name of the 
prominence seen in the front of the throat 
in man, and which is formed by the por¬ 
tion of the larynx known as the thyroid 
cartilage. It is much smaller and less visible 
in females than in males, and is so named 
from the idle notion that it was caused by 
a piece of the forbidden fruit having stuck 
in Adam’s throat. 

Adam’s Bridge, a chain of reefs, sand¬ 
banks, and islands stretching between India 
and Ceylon: so called because the Moham¬ 
medans believe that when Adam was driven 
from paradise he had to pass by this way 
to Ceylon (where is also Adam’s Peak). 

Adam’s Needle, a popular name of the 
Yucca plant. 

Adam’s Peak, one of the highest moun¬ 
tains in Ceylon, 45 m. east-south-east of 



ADAMSON-ADDISON. 


Colombo, conical, isolated, and 7420 feet 
high. On the top, a rocky area of 64 
feet by 45, is a hollow in the rock 5 feet 
long bearing a rude resemblance to a human 
foot, which the Brahmans believe to be the 
footprint of Siva, the Buddhists that of 
Buddha, the Mohammedans that of Adam. 
Devotees of all creeds here meet and pre¬ 
sent their offerings (chiefly rhododendron 
flowers) to the sacred footprint. The ascent 
is very steep, and towards the summit is 
assisted by steps cut and iron chains riveted 
in the rock. 

Adamson, Patrick, a Scottish divine and 
Latin poet; born 1543, died 1592. He 
was educated at St. Andrews, lived some 
years in France, was minister of Paisley, 
and latterly Archbishop of St. Andrews, 
in which position he made himself very 
obnoxious to the Presbyterian party. De¬ 
prived of the revenues of the see he died in 
indigence. He turned portions of the Bible 
into Latin verse. 

Ad'ana, an ancient town of south-eastern 
Asia Minor, on the Sihun, which is here 
navigable, 30 m. from the Mediterranean, 
well built, and with considerable trade. 
Pop. estimated at 24,000 to 40,000. 

Adanson (a-dan-son), Michel, French 
naturalist and traveller (of Scottish ex¬ 
traction); born 1727, died 1806. He lived 
five years in Senegal, and wrote a natural 
history of this region as well as works on 
botany. The baobab genus is named Adan- 
sonia after him. 

Adanso'nia. See preceding art. and 

Baobab. 

A'dar, the twelfth month of the Hebrew 
sacred and sixth of the civil year, answering 
to part of February and part of March. 

Adda (ancient 
Addua), a river 
of North Italy, 
which,descend¬ 
ing from the 
Bhietian Alps, 
falls into Lake 
Como, and leav¬ 
ing this joins 
the Po, after a 
course of about 
170 miles. 

Adda, a spe¬ 
cies of lizard, 
more common¬ 
ly called skink. 

Ad'dax, a species of antelope (Hippotragus 
nasomaculatus) of the size of a large ass, 



Head of Addax (Hippotrdgus 
nasomaculatus). 


with much of its make. The horns of the 
male are about 4 feet long, beautifully 
twisted into a wude-sweeping spiral of two 
turns and a half, with the points directed 
outwards. It has tufts of hair on the fore¬ 
head and throat, and large broad hoofs. It 
inhabits the sandy regions of Nubia and 
Kordofan, and is also found in Caffraria. 

Adder, a name often applied to the com¬ 
mon viper as well as to other kinds of ve¬ 
nomous serpents. See Viper. 

Adder-pike (Trachinus vipera), a small 
species of the weever fish, called also the 
Lesser Weever or Sting-fish. See Weever. 

Adder-stone, the name given in different 
parts of Britain to certain rounded perforated 
stones or glass beads found occasionally, and 
supposed to have a kind of supernatural effi¬ 
cacy in curing the bites of adders. They are 
believed to have been anciently used as 
spindle-whorls, that is, a kind of small fly¬ 
wheels to keep up the rotatory motion of 
the spindle. 

Adder’s-tongue, a species of common fern 

(Ophioglossum vulgatum), whose spores are 
produced on a spike, supposed to resemble 
a serpent’s tongue. 

Adder’s-wort, a name of snakeweed or 
bistort (Polygbnum Bistorta), from its sup¬ 
posed virtue in curing the bite of serpents. 

Ad'dington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth; 
born 1755, died 1844. Entered parliament, 
1783, as a warm supporter of Pitt. Was 
elected speaker of the House of Commons, 
1789, and in 1801 invited by the king to 
fonn an administration, chiefly signalized 
by the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens. 
Quarrelled with Pitt, whom he bitterly 
attacked. Was home secretary from 1812 
till 1822, his repressive policy making him 
remarkably unpopular with the nation at 
large. Retired from official life in 1824. 

Ad'dison, Joseph, an eminent English 
essayist, son of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, 
afterwards dean of Lichfield, born at Mil- 
ston, Wiltshire, 1st May, 1672, died 17th 
June, 1719. He was educated at the Char¬ 
terhouse, where he became acquainted with 
Steele, and afterwards at Oxford. He held 
a fellowship from 1697 till 1711, and gained 
much praise for his Latin poetry and other 
contributions to classical literature. He se¬ 
cured as his earliest patron the poet Dry- 
den, who inserted some of his verses in his 
Miscellanies in 1693. A translation of the 
fourth Georgic, with the exception of the 
story of Aristaeus, by Addison, appeared in 
the same collection in 1694, and he subse- 

30 




ADDISON - 

quently translated for it two and a half 
books of Ovid. Dryden also prefixed his 
prose essay on Virgil’s Georgies to his own 
translation of that poem, which appeared in 
1697. An early patron of his was Charles 
Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax ; an¬ 
other was Lord Somers, who procured him 
a pension of £300 a year to enable him to 
qualify for diplomatic employments by for¬ 
eign travels. He spent from the autumn of 
1699 to that of 1703 on the Continent, where 
he became acquainted with Malebranche, 
Boileau, &c. During his residence abroad 
his tragedy of Cato is supposed to have been 
written. During his journey across Mount 
Cenis he wrote his Letter from Italy, es¬ 
teemed the best of his poems, and in Ger¬ 
many his Dialogues on Medals, which was 
not published till after his death. His 
Remarks on Several Parts of Italy in the 
Years 1701-3 was published in 1705. His 
political friends lost power on the death of 
William III., but The Campaign, a poem 
on the battle of Blenheim, procured him an 
appointment as a commissioner of appeal 
on excise. In 1706 he received an under¬ 
secretaryship, in 1707 accompanied Halifax 
on a mission to Hanover, in 1709 became 
secretary to the viceroy of Ireland, and 
keeper of the records. In 1708 he was 
elected m.p. for Lostwithiel, a seat he ex¬ 
changed in 1710 for Malmesbury, which 
place he continued to represent till his 
death. From October, 1709, to January, 
1711, he contributed 75 papers to the Tat- 
ler, either wholly by himself, or in conjunc¬ 
tion with Steele, thus founding the new 
literary school of the Essayists. For the 
Spectator (2d January, 1711, to 6th Decem¬ 
ber, 1712) he wrote 274 papers, all signed 
by one of the four letters C., L., I., O. His 
tragedy of Cato, produced April, 1713, 
ran for twenty nights, and was translated 
into French, Italian, German, and Latin. 
His other contributions to periodicals in¬ 
cluded 51 papers to the Guardian (May to 
September, 1713), 24 papers to a revived 
Spectator conducted by Budgell, and 2 
papers to Steele’s Lover. On the death of 
Queen Anne he successively became secre¬ 
tary to the lords justices, secretary to the 
Irish viceroy, and one of the lords commis¬ 
sioners of trade. He published the Free¬ 
holder (23d December, 1715, to 9th June, 
1716), a political Spectator. In August, 1716, 
he married the Countess of Warwick, which 
marriage is said to have been uncomfortable. 
He retired from public life, March, 1718, 

31 


- ADDRESS. 

with a pension of £1500 a year. He formed 
a close friendship with Swift, and was chief 
of a distinguished literary circle. He had 
literary quarrels with Pope and Gay, the 
former of whom in revenge wrote the satire 
contained in his lines on Atticus in the 
epistle to Arbuthnot. He also had a paltry 
quarrel over politics with his ancient com¬ 
rade Steele. His death took place at Hol¬ 
land House, its cause being dropsy and 
asthma. He was buried in Westminster 
Abbey. Of his style as a writer so much 
has been said that nothing remains to say 
but to quote the dictum of Johnson, ‘Who¬ 
ever wishes to attain an English style, 
familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not 
ostentatious, must give his days and nights 
to the volumes of Addison.’ He had great 
conversational powers, and his intimates 
speak in the strongest terms of the enjoy¬ 
ment derived from his society, but he was 
extremely reserved before strangers. His 
Dialogues on Medals and Evidences of the 
Christian Religion were published posthu¬ 
mously in Tickell’s collected edition of his 
works. 

Addison’s Disease (from Dr. Addison, 
Guy’s Hospital, London, who traced the 
disease to its source), a fatal disease, the 
seat of which is the two glandular bodies 
placed one at the front of the upper part of 
each kidney, and called supra-renal capsules. 
It is characterized by anaemia or bloodless¬ 
ness, extreme prostration, and the brownish 
or olive-green colour of the skin. Death 
usually results from weakness, and com¬ 
monly within a year. 

Addled Parliament, a parliament called 
April 5, 1614, in order to legalize the cus¬ 
toms duties imposed by James I., but which, 
proceeding to the redress of grievances in¬ 
stead of granting supply, was dissolved, 
June 7, without passing a single bill. 

Address, a document containing an ex¬ 
pression of thanks, congratulation, satisfac¬ 
tion, or dissatisfaction, &c. It is the custom 
of the British parliament to return an 
address to the speech delivered by the sove¬ 
reign at the commencement of every session. 

Address, Forms of. The following are 
the principal modes of formally addressing 
titled personages or persons holding official 
rank in Great Britain:— 

The King or Queen .—Address in writing: To 
the King’s (Queen’s) most excellent Majesty. Say: 
Sire or Madam, Your Majesty. 

The Royal Family. — His Royal Highness 
(H.R.H.) the Prince of Wales, His Royal High¬ 
ness the Duke of C—, His Royal Highness Prinee 



ADDRESS - 

A—. A royal duke should be addressed as Sir, 
not My Lord Duke; and referred to as Your 
Royal Highness. A princess is addressed Her 

Royal Highness the Duchess of-, Her Royal 

Highness Princess A—; and personally as Madam, 
Your Royal Highness. 

Duke and Ducal Family.— His Grace the Duke 

of-; My Lord Duke, Your Grace. Her Grace 

the Duchess of-; Madam, Your Grace. The 

duke’s eldest son is in law only an esquire, but in 
courtesy takes a secondary title of his father, and 
is addressed as if he held it by right. A younger 
son is addressed The Right Honourable Lord 
J— B—; My Lord, Your Lordship; a daughter, 
The Right Honourable Lady M— B— (Christian 
and surname); Madam, Your Ladyship. A duke’s, 
marquis’s, or earl’s daughter marrying a com¬ 
moner simply changes her surname for his. 

The Lord-lieutenant of Ireland is styled His 
Excellency, or, if a duke, His Grace, and addressed 
according to his titular rank. 

Marquis. — The Most Honourable the Marquis 

of-; My Lord Marquis, My Lord. The eldest 

son has his courtesy title, as in the case of a 
duke’s eldest son; the younger sons and the 
daughters are all styled Right Honourable: The 
Right Hon. Lord G— F—; The Right Honourable 
Lady C— T—; Madam, Your Ladyship. 

Earl. — The Right Honourable the Earl of ——; 
My Lord, Your Lordship. The Right Honourable 

the Countess of-; Madam, Your Ladyship. 

The eldest son is addressed by his courtesy title; 
younger son. The Honourable G— T—; Sir, the 
daughter, as duke’s and marquis’s daughter. 

Viscount. —The Right Honourable Lord Vis¬ 
count -; My Lord, Your Lordship. The Right 

Honourable the Viscountess-; Madam, Your 

Ladyship. Son: The Honourable A— B— (Chris¬ 
tian and surname); Sir. Daughter: The Honour¬ 
able J— C— (Christian and surname); Madame; 

if married, The Honourable Mrs. --(married 

name). 

Baron. —The Right Honourable Lord-; My 

Lord, Your Lordship. The Right Honourable Lady 
-; Madam, your Ladyship. Son: The Honour¬ 
able J— C—; Sir. Daughter: The Honourable 

M— H—; if married, The Honourable Mrs.-, 

same as viscount’s daughter. 

Baronet .—Sir A— B—, Baronet; Sir; more 
familiarly Dear Sir A-. 

Knight. —Sir C— D-, Kt., or K.G., K.C.B., 
K G.C.B., &c., according to rank. The wives of 
baronets and knights are styled Lady, Lady-. 

Archbishop.— His Grace the Lord Archbishop 

of-; My Lord Archbishop; Your Grace. An 

archbishop is also styled Most Reverend. 

Bishop .—The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of 

-; My Lord. The wives of prelates have no 

special title. Bishops not connected with the 
English established church may be addressed— 
The Right Reverend Bishop-; Right Rever¬ 

end Sir. 

Dean. —The Very Reverend; Sir; Mr. Dean. 

Members of the Privy Council, members and 
ex-members of cabinet, the Speaker of the House 
of Commons, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief 
Justice, Lord Advocate, the lords of the treasury 
and admiralty, are called Right Honourable; 
members of parliament, Honourable. Ambassa¬ 
dors, governors of colonies, &c., are styled Ex¬ 
cellency. Judges are addressed as the Honour¬ 
able Mr. Justice-. 

The Lord Mayors of London, York, and Dublin, 
and the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, are styled 
Right Honourable; the Lord Provost of Glasgow, 


- ADELARD. 

Honourable. A Mayor is addressed as Right Wor¬ 
shipful. Lords of Session (Scotland) have the 
courtesy title of Lord prefixed to their name, and 
are addressed as My Lord, Your Lordship. Sheriffs 
and their substitutes are addressed in their courts 
in Scotland as My Lord. 

In the United States persons holding official 
rank are similarly addressed; thus the President 
is styled His Excellency, as are also governors of 
states and foreign ministers; the vice-president, 
lieutenant-governors, senators, representatives, 
judges, and mayors are styled Honourable. 

Adduc'tor, a muscle which draws one part 
of the body towards another: applied in 
zoology to one of the muscles which bring 
together the valves of the shell of the bi¬ 
valve molluscs. , 

Adel', See A dal. 

Ade'la, born 1062, died 1137, fourth 
daughter of William the Conqueror, wife 
of Stephen, Earl of Blois and Chartres, and 
mother of Stephen, King of England. In 
her husband’s absence in the first crusade, 
and after his death as regent for her sons 
she proved herself an able ruler and a gen¬ 
erous patroness of learning. 

Adelaide (ad'e-lad) the capital of South 
Australia, 6 miles east from Port Adelaide 
(on St. Vincent Gulf), its port, with which it 
is united by railway, founded in 1837, and 
named after the queen of William IV. 
Situated on a large plain, it is built nearly 
in the form of a square, with the streets at 
right angles, and is divided into North and 
South Adelaide, separated by the river 
Torrens, which is crossed by several bridges, 
and by means of a dam is converted into a 
fine sheet of water. The public buildings 
comprise the Government House, the town- 
hall, the post and telegraph offices, the gov¬ 
ernment offices, court-houses, the houses of 
legislature, the University, South Australian 
Institute, &c. There is a complete service 
of tramway cars. Adelaide is connected by 
railway with Melbourne, and is the ter¬ 
minus of the overland telegraph to Port 
Darwin. It has a large trade. Pop. (in¬ 
cluding suburbs), 1891, 133,252. 

Adelaide, daughter of George, Duke of 
Saxe - Coburg - Meiningen, and wife of the 
Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., 
King of England; born 1792, died 1849; 
married 11th July, 1818, had two daughters, 
who died in infancy. She became queen- 
consort on William attaining the throne in 
1830, and was for a time unpopular from being 
supposed to be averse to reform. On the 
death of William she passed into private 
life, with an allowance of £100,000 a year. 

Adelard of Bath, an English philosoph- 
32 





ADELSBERG-ADIAPHORIST. 


ical writer of the twelfth century. He trav¬ 
elled through Spain, north of Africa, Greece, 
and Asia Minor, and acquired much know¬ 
ledge from the Arabs, which he put in 
systematic shape. Chief works, Perdifficiles 
Qusestiones Naturales, and De Eodem et 
Di verso. 

Adelsberg (adelz-berA), a small town of 
Southern Austria, in Carniola, midway be¬ 
tween Trieste and Laibach, remarkable for 
the wonderful stalactite cave in its vicinity. 
The most extended of the ramifications 
which compose it reaches to over 2 miles 
from the entrance, at which the river Poik 
disappears, and is heard rushing below. 
The stalactites and stalagmites are of the 
most varied and often beautiful forms, and 
have received fanciful appellations, as they 
resemble columns, statues, &c. 

Adelung (ad'e-lung), Johann Christoph, 
a German philologist; born 1732, died 1806. 
In 1759 he was appointed professor in the 
Protestant academy at Erfurt, and two 
years after removed to Leipzig, where he 
applied himself to the works by which he 
made so great a name, particularly his 
German dictionary, Grammatisch-kritisches 
Worterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart 
(Leipzig, 1774-86), and his Mithridates, a 
work on general philology. In 1787 he was 
appointed librarian of the public library in 
Dresden — an office which he held till his 
death. —Friedrich von Adelung, nephew 
of the above, also distinguished himself as 
a philologist. Was tutor to the Grand-duke 
Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia, and 
became president of the Academy of Sci¬ 
ences at St. Petersburg. Born 1768, died 
1843. 

Aden, a seaport town and territory 
belonging to Britain, on the south-west 
coast of Arabia, in a dry and barren district, 
the town being almost entirely closed in by 
an amphitheatre of rocks, and possessing an 
admirable harbour. Occupying an impor¬ 
tant military position, Aden is strongly 
fortified and permanently garrisoned. It is 
of importance also as a coaling station for 
steamers, and carries on a great amount of 
commerce, forming an entrepot and place 
of transhipment for goods valued at 
£4,000,000 a year. Its greatest drawback 
is the scarcity of fresh water, which is 
obtained partly from wells, partly from 
rock-cisterns that receive the rain, and 
partly by condensation from salt water— 
the only unfailing means of supply. The 
peninsula on which it stands somewhat 
vol. I. 33 


resembles the rock of Gibraltar, and could 
be rendered as formidable. Aden was a 
Roman colony, and in the middle ages it 
was a great entrepdt of the Eastern trade. 
It was acquired by Britain in 1839, after 
which it was attacked repeatedly by the 
Arabs. Besides the town and peninsula, 
some 34 square miles of additional territory 
having recently been purchased, the total 
area of the settlement is 70 square miles. 
It is attached to the Bombay Presidency. 
Pop. 35,165. 

Adenanthe'ra, a genus of trees and 
shrubs, natives of the East Indies and 
Ceylon, nat. order Leguminosse. A.pavonlna 
is one of the largest and handsomest trees 
of India, and yields hard solid timber called 
red sandal-wood. The bright scarlet seeds, 
from their equality in weight (each = 4 
grains), are used by goldsmiths in the East 
as weights. 

Adeni'tis (Gr. aden, a gland), in medicine, 
inflammation of one or more of the lym¬ 
phatic glands. 

Aderer'. See Adrar. 

Aderno', a town of Sicily, 18 miles N.w. 
of Catania and about 10 miles w.s.w. of 
Mount Etna. Pop. 19,180. 

Adersbach Rocks (a'derz-ba/i), a re¬ 
markable group of isolated columnar rocks 
on the frontiers of Bohemia and Silesia, 
occupying several square miles in extent. 

Adessena'rian, one of a sect of Christians 
which holds that there is a real presence of 
Christ in the Eucharist, but denying that it 
is effected by transubstantiation. 

Adhesion, the tendency of two bodies to 
stick together when put in close contact, or 
the mutual attraction of their surfaces; dis¬ 
tinguished from cohesion, which denotes the 
mutual attraction between the particles of a 
homogeneous body. Adhesion may exist be¬ 
tween two solids, between a solid and a fluid, 
or between two fluids. A plate of glass or 
of polished metal laid on the surface of 
water and attached to one arm of a balance 
will support much more than its own weight 
in the opposite scale from the force of adhe¬ 
sion between the water and the plate. From 
the same force arises the tendency of most 
liquids, when gently poured from a jar, to 
run down the exterior of a vessel or along 
any other surface they meet. 

Adian'tum, a genus of ferns; the maiden¬ 
hair-fern. 

Adiaph'orist (Gr. adiaphoros, indiffer¬ 
ent), a name given in the sixteenth century 
to Melanchthon’s party, who held some 

3 


ADIGE-ADMETUS. 


opinions and ceremonies to be indifferent 
which Luther condemned as sinful or here¬ 
tical. 

Adige (a'de-ja), German Etsch (ancient 
AthSsis ), a river of Northern Italy, which 
rises in the Rhaetian Alps, and after a south 
and east course of about 180 miles, dur¬ 
ing which it passes Verona and Legnago, 
falls into the Adriatic, forming a delta con¬ 
nected with that of the Po. 

Ad'ipocere (-ser) (L. adeps, fat, and cera, 
wax), a substance of a light-brown colour 
formed by animal matter when protected 
from atmospheric air, and under certain 
circumstances of temperature and humidity. 

Ad'ipose tissue, the cellular tissue con¬ 
taining the oily or fatty matter of the body. 
It underlies the skin, surrounds the large 
vessels and nerves, invests the kidneys, &c., 
and sometimes accumulates in large masses. 

Adirondack Mountains, in the U. States, 
a group belonging to the Appalachian chain, 
extending from the N.E. corner of the state 
of New York to near its centre. The 
scenery is wild and grand, diversified by 
numerous beautiful lakes, and the whole 
region is a favourite resort of sportsmen 
and tourists. There is a public park. 

Ad'it, a more or less horizontal opening, 
giving access to the shaft of a mine. It is 
made to slope gradually from the farthest 
point in the interior to the mouth, and by 
means of it the principal drainage is usu¬ 
ally carried on. See Mine. 

Ad'jective, in grammar, a word used to 
denote some quality in the noun or substan¬ 
tive to which it is accessory. The adjective 
is indeclinable in English (but has degrees 
of comparison), and generally precedes the 
noun, while in most other European lan 
guages it follows the inflections of the sub¬ 
stantive, and is more commonly placed 
after it, though in German it precedes it, 
as in English. 

Adjudication, in law, the act of grant¬ 
ing something to a litigant by a judicial 
sentence. 

Adjustment, in marine insurance, is the 
settling of the amount of the loss which the 
insurer is entitled under a particular policy 
to recover, and if the policy is subscribed 
by more than one underwriter, of the amounts 
which the underwriters respectively are 
liable to pay. 

Ad'jutant, an officer appointed to each 
regiment or battalion, whose duty is to 
assist the commander. He is charged with 
instruction in drill, and all the interior dis¬ 


cipline, duties, and efficiency of the corps. 
He has the charge of all documents and 
correspondence, and is the channel of com¬ 
munication for all orders. 

Adjutant-bird, Leptoptilus argala, a 
large grallatorial or wading bird of the 
stork family, native of the warmer parts of 
India, where it is known as Hurglla or Arg&la, 



It stands about five feet high, has an enor¬ 
mous bill, nearly bare head and neck, and 
a pouch hanging from the under part of the 
neck. It is one of the most voracious car¬ 
nivorous birds known, and in India, from its 
devouring all sorts of carrion and noxious 
animals, is protected by law. From under¬ 
neath the wings are obtained those light 
downy feathers known as marabou feathers, 
from the name of an allied species of bird 
(L. marabou) inhabiting Western Africa, and 
also producing them. 

Adjutant-general is the chief staff-officer 
of an army charged with the execution of 
all orders relating to the recruitment, equip¬ 
ment, and efficiency of the troops, and who 
distributes to them the orders of the day.— 
Among the Jesuits this name was given to 
a select number of fathers, who resided with 
the general of the order, and had each a pro¬ 
vince or country assigned to him. 

Ad'jutators, in English history, repre¬ 
sentatives elected by the parliamentary 
forces in 1647 to act with the officers in 
compelling parliament to satisfy the de¬ 
mands of the army. 

Adme'tus, in Greek mythology, King of 
34 
















ADNATE. 


ADMINISTRATION 


Pherae, in Thessaly, and husband of Alcestis, 
who gave signal proof of her attachment by 
consenting to die in order to prolong her 
husband s life. See Alcestis. 

Administration, in politics, the executive 
power or body, the ministry or cabinet. 

Administrator, in law, the person to 
whom the goods of a man dying intestate 
are committed by the proper authority, and 
who is bound to account when required. 

Ad'miral, the commander-in-chief of a 
squadron or fleet of ships of war, or of the 
entire naval force of a country, or simply a 
naval officer of the highest rank. In the 
British navy admirals are of four ranks — 
admiral of the fleet, admiral, vice-admiral, 
and rear-admiral. They were also divided 
formerly into three classes, named after the 
colours of their respective flags, admirals of 
the red, of the white, and of the blue. In 
1864, however, this distinction was given up, 
and now there is one flag common to all ships 
of war, namely, the white ensign divided 
into four quarters by the cross of St. George, 
and having the union in the upper corner 
next the staff.—The title admiral of the fleet 
is conferred on a few admirals, and carries 
an increase of pay along with it.—A vice- 
admiral is next in rank and command to the 
admiral: he carries his flag at the foretop- 
gallant-mast head, while an admiral carries 
his at the main. A rear-admiral, next 
in rank to the vice-admiral, carries his 
flag at the mizzentop-gallant-mast head.— 
Lord high admiral, in Great Britain, an 
officer who (when this rare dignity is con¬ 
ferred) is at the head of the naval adminis¬ 
tration of Great Britain. There have 
been few high admirals since 1632, when 
the office was first put in commission. 
James Duke of York (afterwards James II.) 
held it for several years during Charles II.’s 
reign. In the reign of William and Mary 
it was vested in lords commissioners of the 
admiralty. In the United States navy the 
offices of admiral and vice-admiral have 
been discontinued, and there are only six 
rear-admirals authorized by law. 

Ad'miralty, that department of the gov¬ 
ernment of a country that is at the head of 
its naval service. In Britain the lords 
commissioners of the admiralty were for¬ 
merly seven, but are now five in number, 
with the addition of a civil lord, at the head 
being the first lord , and four others being 
naval lords. The U. S. District Court ex¬ 
ercises jurisdiction over all maritime con¬ 
tracts, torts, injuries, or offences. In cer¬ 


tain cases causes may be removed from this 
court to the Circuit and Supreme Courts. 

Admiralty Charts are charts issued by 
the hydrographic department of the ad¬ 
miralty of Britain; they are prepared by 
specially appointed surveyors and draughts¬ 
men, and besides being supplied to every 
ship in the fleet, are sold to the general 
public at prices much less than their cost. 
In connection with these charts there 
are published books of sailing directions, 
lists of lights, &c. The navigating charts 
are generally on the scale of half an inch 
to a mile, and show all the dangers of the 
coasts with sufficient distinctness to enable 
the seaman to avoid them; the charts of larger 
size exhibit all the intricacies of the coast. 

Admiralty Court, a court which takes 
cognizance of civil and criminal causes of a 
maritime nature, including captures in war 
made, and offences committed, on the high 
seas, and has to do with many matters con¬ 
nected with maritime affairs. In England 
the admiralty court was once held before 
the lord high admiral, and at a later period 
was presided over by his deputy or the 
deputy of the lords commissioners. It now 
forms a branch of the probate, divorce, and 
admiralty division of the High Court of 
Justice. There is a separate Irish ad¬ 
miralty court. In Scotland admiralty cases 
are now prosecuted in the Court of Session, 
or in the sheriff court. In the United 
States admiralty cases are taken up in the 
first instance by the district courts. 

Admiralty Island, an island belonging 
to the United States off the north-west 
coast of North America, 80 or 90 miles long 
and about 20 broad, covered with fine tim¬ 
ber and inhabited by Sitka Indians. 

Admiralty Islands, a cluster of islands, 
north of New Guinea, in Bismarck Archi¬ 
pelago, now belonging to Germany. The 
largest is about 60 miles in length; the rest 


are much smaller. They 
are covered with a luxu¬ 
riant vegetation, and pos¬ 
sess dense groves of cocoa- 
nut trees. The islanders 
are of a tawny colour, 
have no metal (unless 
what is imported), but use 
tools of stone and shell. 

Ad'nate, in botany, 
applied to a part grow¬ 
ing attached to another and principal part 
by its whole length, as stipules adnated to 
the leaf-stalk. 



1, Adnate anther. 

2, Adnate stipule. 



ADOBE —ADRIAN. 


Adobe (a-dsfijS), the Spanish name for a 
brick made of loamy earth, containing about 
two-thirds fine sand and one-third clayey 
dust, sun-dried; in common use for building 
in Mexico, Texas, and Central America. 

Adorphus, John, 1766-1845, an able 
English criminal lawyer, and author of the 
History of England from the Accession of 
George III. and Biographical Memoirs of 
the French Revolution. 

Adolphus of Nassau, elected Emperor of 
Germany, 1292. In 1298 the college of 
electors transferred the crown to Albert of 
Austria, but Adolphus refusing to abdicate 
a war ensued, in which he fell, after a 
heroic resistance, July 2, 1298. 

Adonai (ad'o-nl), a name of God among 
the Jews. See Jehovah. 

Ado'ni, a town and district in Madras; 
population of former 22,732, of latter 
179,448. Well known for excellent silk 
and cotton fabrics. 

Ado'nis, a mythological personage, ori¬ 
ginally a deity of the Phoenicians, but 
borrowed into Greek mythology. He was 
represented as being a great favourite of 
Aphrodite (Venus), who accompanied him 
when engaged in hunting, of which he was 
very fond. He received a mortal wound 
from the tusk of a wild boar, and when the 
goddess hurried to his assistance she found 
him lifeless, whereupon she caused his blood 
to give rise to the anemone. The worship 
of Adonis, which arose in Phoenicia, latterly 
was widely spread round the Mediterranean. 
The name Adonis is akin to the Hebrew 
Adonai , Lord. See Tammuz. 

Ado'nis, a small river rising in Lebanon 
and flowing to the Mediterranean. When in 
flood it is tinged of a red colour, and so is 
connected with the legend of Adonis. 

Ado'nis, a genus of ranunculaceous plants. 
In the corn-adonis or pheasant’s eye ( A. 
autumnalis) the petals are bright scarlet 
like the blood of Adonis, from which the 
plant is fabled to have sprung. 

Adoptia'ni, a religious sect which asserted 
that Christ, as to his divine nature, was 
properly the Son of God; but as to his 
human nature, only such by adoption. 
Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, 
bishop of Urgel, in Spain, avowed this doc¬ 
trine in 783, and made proselytes both in 
Spain and France. The heresy was con¬ 
demned by several synods. 

Adop'tion, the admission of a stranger by 
birth to the privileges of a child. Among 
the ancient Greeks and Romans, and also 


some modern nations, adoption is placed 
under legal regulation. In Rome the effect 
of adoption was to create the legal relation 
of father and son, just as if the person 
adopted was born of the blood of the adopter 
in lawful marriage. The adopted son took 
the name of his adopter, and was bound to 
perform his new father’s religious duties. 
Adoption is not recognized by the law of 
England and Scotland; there are legal 
means to enable a person to assume the 
name and arms, and to inherit the property 
of another. In some of the United States 
adoption is regulated by laws not very dis¬ 
similar to what prevailed among the Ro¬ 
mans. 

Adour (a-dor), a river of France, rising 
in the Pyrenees, and falling into the sea 
a little below Bayonne; length about 200 
miles; partly navigable. 

Ado'wa, a town of Abyssinia, in Tigre, 
at an elevation of 6270 feet; the chief com¬ 
mercial depot on the caravan route from 
Massowa to Gondar. Pop. about 4000. 

Adra (a'c/ra), a seaport of Southern Spain, 
in Andalusia, near the mouth of the Adra, 
on the Mediterranean; with marble quarries 
and lead works. Pop. 11,320. 

Adramit'ti (ancient Adramyttium; Tur¬ 
kish Edremid), a town of Turkey in Asia, 
near the head of the gulf of the same name, 
80 miles north of Smyrna. Pop. 8000. 

Adrar', a district in the Western Sahara 
peopled by Berbers possessing camels, sheep, 
and oxen, and cultivating dates, wheat, 
barley, and melons. Chief towns, Wadan 
and Shingit, which has inexhaustible beds 
of rock-salt. 

Adria (a'dri-a), a cathedral city of North¬ 
ern Italy, province of Rovigo, between the 
Po and the Adige, on the site of the ancient 
town of same name, whenoe the Adriatic 
derives its appellation. Owing to alluvial 
deposits the sea is now 17 miles distant. 
Pop. 11,554. 

Adrian, the name of six popes. The first, 
a Roman, ruled from 772 795; a contem¬ 
porary and friend of Charlemagne. He 
expended vast sums in rebuilding the walls 
and restoring the aqueducts of Rome.— 
Adrian II., a Roman, was elected pope in 
867, at the age of seventy-five years. He 
died in 872, in the midst of conflicts with 
the Greek Church. — Adrian HI., a Roman, 
elected 884, was pope for one year and four 
months only. He was the first pope that 
changed his name on the occasion of hia 
exaltation.—Adrian IV., originally named 

36 



ADRIAN-ADULTERATION. 


Nicolas Breakspcar, the only Englishman 
that ever occupied the papal chair, was born 
about 1100, and died 1159. He was a 
native of Hertfordshire, studied in France, 
and became abbot of St. Rufus in Provence, 
cardinal and legate to Norway. Chosen 
pope in 1154, his reign is chiefly remark¬ 
able for his almost constant struggle for 
supremacy with Frederick Barbarossa, who 
on one occasion had been forced to hold his 
stirrup, and had been crowned by him at 
Rome (1155). He issued the famous bull 
(1158) granting the sovereignty of Ireland, 
on condition of the payment of Peter’s pence, 
to Henry II.—Adrian V., previously called 
Ottoboni da Fiesco, of Genoa, settled, as 
legate of the pope, the dispute between King 
Henry III. of England and his nobles, in 
favour of the former; but died a month after 
his election to the papal chair (1276).— 
Adrian VI., born at Utrecht in 1459, 
was elected to the papal chair, January 9, 
1522. He tried to reform abuses in the 
church, but opposed the zeal of Luther with 
reproaches and threats, and even attempted 
to excite Erasmus and Zuinglius against 
him. Died 1523, after a reign of one year 
and a half. 

A drian, a town of the United States, in 
Michigan, 70 miles w.s.w. of Detroit. Its 
extensive water-power is employed in works 
of various kinds. Pop. 1890, 8756. 

A'drian, Publius HIlius Hadrianus. 
See Hadrian. 

Adriano'ple (Turkish Edrcneh), an im¬ 
portant city of Turkey in Europe, about 
135 miles w.N.w. from Constantinople, on 
the Maritza (ancient Hebrus), at its junc¬ 
tion with the Tundja and the Arda. It has 
a great mosque, among the most magnificent 
in the world; a palace, now in a state of de¬ 
cay; a grand aqueduct, and a splendid ba¬ 
zaar; manufactures of silk, woollen, and 
cotton stuffs, otto of roses, leather, &c., and 
an important trade. Adrianople received 
its present name from the Roman emperor 
Adrian (Hadi'ian). In 1361 it was taken 
by Amurath I., and was the residence of 
the Turkish sovereigns till the conquest of 
Constantinople in 1453. In 1829 it was 
taken by the Russians, and here was then 
concluded the peace of Adrianople, by which 
Russia received important accessions of ter¬ 
ritory in the Caucasus and on the coast of 
the Black Sea. The Russians occupied it 
also in 1878. Population, 60,000. 

Adrian’s (or Hadrian’s) Wall. See 
Roman Walls. 


Adriatic Sea, or Gulf of Venice, an arm 
of the Mediterranean, stretching in a north¬ 
westerly direction from the Straits of 
Otranto, between Italy and the Turkish and 
Austrian dominions. Length, about 480 
miles; average breadth, about 100; area, 
about 60,000 square miles. The rivers 
which it receives, particularly the Po, its 
principal feeder, have produced, and are 
still producing, great geological changes in 
its basin by their alluvial deposits. Hence 
Adria, between the Po and the Adige, which 
gives the sea its name, though once a flour¬ 
ishing seaport, is now 17 miles inland. The 
principal trading ports on the Italian side 
are Brindisi, Bari, Ancona, Sinigaglia, and 
Venice; on the east side Ragusa, Fiume, 
Pirano, Pola, and Trieste. 

Adscripti Glebse (L., persons attached 
to the soil), a term applied to a class of Ro¬ 
man slaves attached in perpetuity to and 
transferred with the land they cultivated. 
Colliers and salt workers in Scotland were 
in a similar position till 1775. 

Adula'ria, a very pure, limpid, trans¬ 
lucent variety of felspar, called by lapidaries 
moonstone, on account of the play of light 
exhibited by the arrangement of its crystal¬ 
line structure. Found on the Alps, but the 
best specimens are from Ceylon. So called 
from Advla , one of the peaks of St. Gothard, 
where specimens are got. 

Adule (a-do'le), Adu'lis. See Zxdla. 

Adul'lam, Cave of, a cave to which 
David fled when persecuted by Saul, and 
whither he was followed by ‘every one who 
was in distress, in debt, or discontented’ 
(1 Sam. xxii. 1, 2). The name Adullamites 
was given to an English political party, 
consisting of Mr. R. Lowe, Lord Elcho, and 
other Liberals, who opposed the majority 
of their party on the Franchise Bill of 1866. 
The term originated from a speech of Mr. 
John Bright. 

Adultera'tion, a term not only applied in 
its proper sense to the fraudulent mixture 
of articles of commerce, food, drink, drugs, 
seeds, &c., with noxious or inferior ingre¬ 
dients, but also by magistrates and analysts 
to accidental impurity, and even in some 
cases to actual substitution. The chief ob¬ 
jects of adulteration are to increase the 
weight or volume of the article, to give a 
colour which either makes a good article 
more pleasing to the eye or else disguises 
an inferior one, to substitute a cheaper form 
of the article, or the same substance from 
which the strength has been extracted, or 


37 


ADULTERATION. 


to give it a false strength.—Among the 
adulterations which are practised for the 
purpose of fraudulently increasing the weight 
or volume of an article are the following:— 
Bread is adulterated with alum or sulphate 
of copper, which gives solidity to the gluten 
of damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or 
carbonate of soda to correct the acidity of 
such flour; and with boiled rice or potatoes, 
w'kieh enables the bread to carry more water, 
and thus to produce a larger number of 
loaves from a given quantity of flour. Wheat 
flour is adulterated wflth other inferior flours, 
as the flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, 
potato, and with sulphate of lime, alum, &c. 
Milk is usually adulterated with water. The 
adulterations generally present in butter 
consist of an undue proportion of salt and 
water, lard, tallow, and other fats; when of 
poor quality it is frequently coloured with 
a little annatto, and, at times, with the juice 
of carrots. Genuine butter should not con¬ 
tain less than 80 per cent of butter-fat. 
Cheese is also coloured with annatto and 
other substances. Tea is adulterated (chiefly 
in China) with sand, iron-filings, chalk, gyp¬ 
sum, China clay, exhausted tea leaves, and 
the leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, 
and plum, whilst colour and weight are added 
by black-lead, indigo, Prussian-blue (one of 
the deleterious ingredients used by the 
Chinese in converting the lowest qualities 
of black into green teas), gum, turmeric, 
soapstone, catechu, and other substances. 
Coffee is mingled with chicory, roasted 
wheat, roasted beans, acorns, mangel-wur¬ 
zel, rye-flour, and coloured with burned 
sugar and other materials. Chicory is adul¬ 
terated with different flours, as rye, wheat, 
beans, &c., and coloured with ferruginous 
earths, burned sugar, Venetian red, &c. 
Cocoa and chocolate are mixed with the 
cheaper kinds of arrow-root, animal matter, 
corn, sago, tapioca, &c. Sugar (moist) may 
be adulterated to some extent with sand and 
flour. Tobacco is mixed with sugar and 
treacle, aloes, liquorice, oil, alum, &c., and 
such leaves as rhubarb, chicory, cabbage, 
burdock, coltsfoot, besides excess of salt and 
water. Snuffs are adulterated with carbon¬ 
ate of ammonia, glass, sand, colouring mat¬ 
ter, &c. Confections are adulterated with 
flour and sulphate of lime. Preserved vege¬ 
tables are kept green and poisoned by salts 
of copper. The acridity of mustard is com¬ 
monly reduced by flour, and the colour of 
the compound is improved by turmeric. 
Pepper is adulterated with linseed-meal, 


flour, mustard husks, &c. Colour is given 
to pickles by salts of copper, acetate of 
copper, &c. Ale is adulterated with com¬ 
mon salt, Cocctilus Indie us, grains of para¬ 
dise, quassia, and other bitters, sulphate of 
iron, alum, &c. Porter and stout are mixed 
with sugar, treacle, salt, and an excess of 
water. Brandy is diluted wdth water, and 
burned sugar is added to improve the colour; 
sometimes bad whisky is flavoured and 
coloured so as to resemble brandy, and sold 
under its name. Gin is mixed with ex¬ 
cess of water, and flavouring matters of 
various kinds, with alum and tartar, are 
added. Rum is diluted with water, and 
the flavour and colour are kept up 
by the addition of cayenne and burned 
sugar. For champagne gooseberry and 
other inferior wines are often substituted. 
Port is manufactured from red Cape and 
other inferior wines, the body, flavour, 
strength, and colour being produced by gum 
dragon, the washings of brandy casks, and 
a preparation of German bilberries. Cheap 
brown sherry is mixed with Cape and other 
low-priced brandies, and is flavoured with 
the washings of brandy casks, sugar-candy, 
and bitter almonds. Pale sherries are pro¬ 
duced by gypsum, by a process called plas¬ 
tering, which removes the natural acids as 
well as the colour of the wine. Other wines 
are adulterated with elderberry, logwood, 
Brazil-wood, cudbear, red beetroot, &c., for 
colour; with lime or carbonate of lime, car¬ 
bonate of soda, carbonate of potash, and 
litharge, to correct acidity; with catechu, 
sloe-leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; 
with sulphate of lime and alum for remov¬ 
ing colour; with cane-sugar for giving sweet¬ 
ness and body; with alcohol for fortifying; 
and with ether, especially acetic ether, for 
giving bouquet and flavour.—Medicines, 
such as jalap, opium, rhubarb, chinchona 
bark, scammony, aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, 
&c., are mixed with various foreign sub¬ 
stances. Castor-oil has been adulterated 
with other oils; and inferior oils are often 
mixed with cod-liver oil. Cantharides are 
often mixed with golden-beetle and also 
artificially-coloured glass.—The adulteration 
of seeds is largely practised also, the seed 
w T hich forms the adulterant being of course 
of the most worthless kind that can be had. 
Thus turnip-seed is mixed with rape, wild 
mustard, or charlock, which are steamed and 
kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so as to 
evade detection in the progress of grow'th; 
old and useless turnip-seed is also used 

38 



ADULTERY-AD VITAM AUT CULPAM. 


fraudulently mixed with fresh seeds. Clo¬ 
ver is also much mixed with plantain and 
mere weeds.—Acts against adulteration 
have been passed in various countries and 
at various times. In Britain there was a law 
against it as early as 1267. 

Adul'tery, the voluntary sexual inter¬ 
course of a married person with any other 
than the offenders husband or wife ; when 
committed between two married persons, 
the offence is called double, and when be¬ 
tween a married and single person, single 
adultery. The Mosaic, Greek, and early 
Roman law only recognized the offence 
when a married woman was the offender. 
By the Jewish law it was punished with 
death. In Greece the laws against it were 
severe. By the laws of Draco and Solon 
adulterers, when caught in the act, were at 
the mercy of the injured party. In early 
Rome the punishment was left to the dis¬ 
cretion of the husband and parents of the 
adulteress. The punishment assigned by 
the Lex Julia, under Augustus, was banish¬ 
ment or a heavy fine. Under Constantius 
and Constans, adulterers were burned or 
sewed in sacks and thrown into the sea; 
under Justinian the wife was to be scourged, 
lose her dower, and be shut up in a 
monastery; at the expiration of two years 
the husband might take her again; if he 
refused she was shaven and made a nun for 
life. By the ancient laws of France this 
crime was punishable with death. In Spain 
personal mutilation was frequently the pun¬ 
ishment adopted. In several European 
countries adultery is regarded as a criminal 
offence, but in none does the punishment 
exceed imprisonment for a short period, ac¬ 
companied by a fine. In England formerly 
it was punishable with fine and imprison¬ 
ment, and in Scotland it was frequently 
made a capital offence. In Great Britain 
at the present day, however, it is punishable 
only by ecclesiastical censure. The aggrieved 
husband, however, can obtain damages a- 
gainst his wife’s seducer. A man can obtain 
a dissolution of his marriage on the ground 
of his wife’s adultery, and a wife can obtain 
a judicial separation on the ground of her 
husband's adultery, or a dissolution of the 
marriage if the offence is coupled with 
cruelty, desertion, or bigamy. In Scotland 
it is not necessary to prove cruelty. In the 
United States the punishment of adultery 
has varied materially at different times. It 
is, however, very seldom punished criminally 
in the States. 


Ad valo'rem (Lat., according to the value), 
a term applied to customs or duties levied 
according to the worth of the goods, as 
sworn to by the owner, and not according 
to number, weight, measure, &c. 

Advance-note, a draft on the owner of a 
vessel, generally for one month’s wages, 
given by the master to the sailors on their 
signing the articles of agreement. The 
granting of such notes to British sailors was 
made illegal by an act passed in 1880. 

Ad'vent (Latin adventus, an arrival, ‘the 
coming of our Saviour’), the name applied 
to the holy season which occupies the four 
or, according to the Greek Church, six weeks 
preceding Christmas, and which forms the 
first portion of the ecclesiastical year, as 
observed by the Anglican, the R. Catholic 
and the Greek Church. 

Ad'ventists, a small religious sect of the 
United States, who believe in the speedy 
coming of Christ, and generally practise 
adult immersion.—There is also a sect called 
Seventh-day Adventists, who hold that the 
coming of Christ is at hand, and maintain 
that the Sabbath is still the seventh day of 
the week. 

Ad'verb, one of the parts of speech used 
to limit or qualify the signification of an 
adjective, verb, or other adverb; as, very 
cold, naturally brave, much more clearly, 
readily agreed. Adverbs may be classified 
as follows:—1, adverbs of time, as, now , 
then, never, &c.; 2, of place, as, here, there, 
where, &c.; 3, of degree, as, very, much, 
nearly, almost, &o.; 4, of affirmation, nega¬ 
tion, or doubt, as, yes, no, certainly, perhaps, 
&c.; 5, of manner, as, well, badly, clearly, &c. 

Advertisement, a notice given to indivi¬ 
duals or the public of some fact, the an¬ 
nouncement of which may affect either the 
interest of the advertiser or that of the 
parties addressed. The vehicle employed is 
generally special bills or placards and notices 
inserted in newspapers and periodicals, and 
the profit derivable from advertisements 
forms the main support of the newspaper 
press. In Britain previously to 1833 a 
duty of 3s. 6d. was imposed on all adver¬ 
tisements whether long or short; this was 
then reduced to Is. 6c/.; and in 1853 it was 
entirely repealed. 

Ad vitam aut culpam (L., for life or till 
a fault), a formula often used in regard to 
appointments to posts or offices, intimating 
that they are held for life or till the person 
forfeits his position by some fault or mis¬ 
deed. 


39 



ADVOCATE 


^GILOPS. 


Ad'vocate (L. advocatus — ad, to, voco, 
to call), a lawyer authorized to plead the 
cause of his clients before a court of law. 
It is only in Scotland that this word seems 
to denote a distinct class belonging to the 
legal profession, the advocates of Scotland 
being the pleaders before the supreme 
courts, and corresponding to the barristers 
of England and Ireland. These advocates 
all belong to the Faculty of Advocates, 
Edinburgh, to whom the oral pleadings in 
the Court of Session is for the most part 
limited, while they are also competent to 
plead in all the inferior Scottish courts and 
in the House of Lords in cases of appeal 
from the Court of Session. The supreme 
judges in Scotland, as well as the sheriffs of 
the various counties, are always selected from 
among them. Candidates for admission must 
undergo two separate examinations, one in 
general scholarship and the other in law.— 
The Lord A dvocate, called also the King's or 
Queen’s Advocate, is the principal law officer 
of the crown in Scotland. He is the public 
prosecutor of crimes in the Supreme Court, 
and senior counsel for the crown in civil 
causes. Being appointed by the crown, he 
goes out of office with the administration 
to which he belongs. As public prosecutor 
he is assisted by the solicitor-general and 
by four junior counsel called advocates- 
depute. In the United States an advocate 
is usually termed a counsel, counsellor, or 
attorney-at-law. 

Advocates, Faculty of. See Advocate. 

Advocates’ Library, the chief library in 
Scotland, located in Edinburgh, and founded 
about 1682 by the Faculty of Advocates. 
It was increased by donations and by sums 
granted by the faculty from time to time. 
As the donations were not confined to ad¬ 
vocates the library was considered a kind of 
public library, and it has continued to retain 
this character. In 1709 it obtained, along 
with eight other libraries, the right to a 
copy of every new book published in Britain, 
which right it still possesses. The number 
of volumes is over 265,000 and MSS. over 
3000. 

Advoca'tus Diab'oli (Devil’s advocate), 
in the Boman Catholic Church, a func 
tionary who, when a deceased person is 
proposed for canonization, brings forward 
and insists upon all the weak points of the 
character and life of the deceased, endeav¬ 
ouring to show that he is not worthy of 
sainthood. The opposite side is taken by 
the Advocatus Dei , God’s advocate. 


Advow'son, in English law, a right of 
presentation to a vacant benefice, or, ir 
other words, a right of nominating a person 
to officiate in a vacant church. Those who 
have this right are styled patrons. Ad vow- 
sons are of three kinds— presentative, colla- 
tive, and donative: presentative, when the 
patron presents his clerk to the bishop of 
the diocese to be instituted; coUative, when 
the bishop is the patron, and institutes or 
collates his clerk by a single act; donative, 
when a church is founded by the king, or 
any person licensed by him, without being 
subject to the ordinary, so that the patron 
confers the benefice on his clerk without 
presentation, institution, or induction. 

Ad'ytum, a secret place of retirement in 
the ancient temples, esteemed the most sacred 
spot; the innermost sanctuary or shrine. 
From this place the oracles were given, and 
none but the priests were permitted to enter 
it. The Holy of Holies or Sanctum Sanc¬ 
torum of the Temple at Jerusalem was of a 
similar character. 

Adze, a cutting instrument used for chip¬ 
ping the surface of timber, somewhat of a 
mattock shape, and having a blade of steel 
forming a portion of a cylindrical surface, 
with a cutting edge at right angles to the 
length of the handle. 

2-Ediles (e'dllz), Boman magistrates wdio 
had the supervision of the national games 
and spectacles; of the public edifices, such 
as temples (the name comes from cedes, a 
temple); of private buildings, of the markets, 
cleansing and draining the city, &c. 

TE'dui, one of the most powerful nations 
of Gaul, between the Liger (Loire) and the 
Arar (Sa6ne). On the arrival of Julius 
Csesar in Gaul (b.c. 58) they were subject 
to Ariovistus, but their independence was 
restored by Csesar. Their chief town was 
Bibracte (Autun). 

•SSgade'an Islands, a group of small islands 
lying off the western extremity of Sicily, 
and consisting of Maritimo, Favignana, 
Levanso, and Le Formiche. 

iEgag'rus, a wild species of ibex ( Capra 
cegagrus), found in troops on the Caucasus, 
and many Asiatic mountains, believed to be 
the original source of at least one variety 
of the domestic goat. 

.TEgean Sea (e-je'an), that part of the 
Mediterranean which washes the eastern 
shores of Greece, the southern coast of 
Turkey, and the western coast of Asia 
Minor. See Archipelago. 

iE'gilops, a genus of grasses, very closely 

40 



EGINA 


EOLIANS. 


allied to wheat, and somewhat remarkable 
from the alleged fact that by cultivation 
one of the species becomes a kind of wheat. 

Egina (e-jl'na), a Greek island in the 
Gulf of Egina, south of Athens, triangular 
in form ; area about 32 square miles; pop. 
7000. Except in the west, where the surface 
is more level, the island is mountainous and 
unproductive. The inhabitants are chiefly 
engaged in trade, seafaring, and agricul¬ 
ture, the chief crops being almonds, olives, 
and grain. The greater number of them 
reside in the seaport town of Egina. Egina 
was anciently colonized by Dorians from the 
opposite coast of Peloponnesus. In the latter 
half of the sixth century B.c. it had a flour¬ 
ishing commerce, a large navy, and was the 
seat of a distinct school of art. At the battle 
of Salamis (480 B.c.) the Eginetans behaved 
with great valour. In 456 the island fell 
under the power of the Athenians, and in 
431 the Eginetans were expelled to make 
room for Athenian settlers, but were after¬ 
wards restored. On a hill are the remains 
of a splendid temple of Athena (Minerva), 
many of the columns of which are still 
standing. Here were found in 1811 a 
number of marble statues (the AEginetan 
marbles), which are now at Munich, and are 
prized as throwing light on the early history 
of Greek art. Though in these figures there 
is a wonderfully exact imitation of nature, 
yet there is a certain stiffness about them 
and an unnatural sameness of expression in 
all. They should probably be assigned to 
the period 500-480 B.c. 

Egis (e'jis), the shield of Zeus, according 
to Homer, but according to later writers and 
artists a metal cuirass or breastplate, in which 
was set the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and 
with which Athena (Minerva) is often figured 
as being protected. In a figurative sense 
the word is used to denote some shielding 
or protecting power. 

Egle (e'gle), a genus of plants. See 

Bel * 

Egospot'ami (‘goat-rivers’), a place on 
the Hellespont, of some note in Greek his¬ 
tory, the Athenian fleet being here com¬ 
pletely defeated in 405 B.c. by the Spartan 
Lysander, thus ending the Peloponnesian 
war. 

Elfric (al'frik), Abbot, called Grammat¬ 
icus (the grammarianl, was a celebrated 
English author of the eleventh century. He 
became a monk of Abingdon, was afterwards 
connected with Winchester, and died Abbot 
of Ensham. His principal works are two 

41 


books of homilies, a Treatise on the Old and 
New Testaments, a translation and abridg¬ 
ment of the first seven books of the Bible, 
a Latin Grammar and Glossary, &c. He has 
been frequently confounded both with El- 
fric, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Elfric, 
Archbishop of York, who lived about the 
same time. 

Elia'nus, Claudius, often called simply 
Elian, a Roman author who lived about 
a.d. 221, and wrote in Greek a collection of 
stories and anecdotes and a natural history 
of animals. 

Aelst (iilst), Belgian town, same as Alost. 

Ene'as, the hero of Virgil’s Eneid, a 
Trojan, who, according to Homer, was, next 
to Hector, the bravest of the warriors of 
Troy. When that town was taken and set 
on fire, ..Eneas, according to the narrative of 
Virgil, with his father, son, and wife Creusa, 
fled, but the latter was lost in the confusion 
of the flight. Having collected a fleet he 
sailed for Italy, but after numerous adven¬ 
tures he was driven by a tempest on the 
coast of Africa, where Queen Dido of Car¬ 
thage received him kindly, and would have 
married him. Jupiter, however, sent Mer¬ 
cury to .Eneas, and commanded him to sail 
for Italy. Whilst the deserted Dido ended 
her life on the funeral pile Eneas set sail 
with his companions, and after further ad¬ 
ventures by land and sea reached the country 
of King Latinus, in Italy. The king’s 
daughter Lavinia was destined by an oracle 
to a stranger, this stranger being Eneas, 
but was promised by her mother to Turnus, 
king of the Ruthli. This occasioned a war, 
after the termination of which, Turnus hav¬ 
ing fallen by his hand, Eneas married 
Lavinia. His son by Lavinia, Eneas Syl¬ 
vius, was the ancestor of the kings of Alba 
Longa, and of Romulus and Remus, the 
founders of the city of Rome. 

Eolian Harp, or Eolus’ Harp, a mu¬ 
sical instrument, generally consisting of a 
box of thin fibrous wood (often of deal), «to 
which are attached from eight to fifteen 
fine catgut strings or wires, stretched on low 
bridges at each end, and tuned in unison. 
Its length is made to correspond with the 
size of the window or other aperture in which 
it is intended to be placed. When the wind 
blows athwart the strings it produces very 
beautiful sounds, sweetly mingling all the 
harmonic tones, and swelling or diminishing 
according to the strength or weakness of the 
blast. 

Eolians (Gr, Aioleis), one of the four 


iEOLIPILE 


AERONAUTICS. 


races into which the ancient Greeks were 
divided, originally inhabiting the district 
of iEolis, in Thessaly, from which they spread 
over other parts of Greece. In early times 
they were the most numerous and powerful 
of the Hellenic races, chiefly inhabiting 
Northern Greece and the western side of 
Peloponnesus, though latterly a portion of 
them went to Lesbos and Tenedos and the 
north-west shores of Asia Minor, where they 
possessed a number of cities. Their lan¬ 
guage, the iEolian dialect, was one of the 
three principal dialects of the Greek. It 
was cultivated for literary purposes chiefly 
at Lesbos, and was the dialect in which 
Alcaeus and Sappho wrote. 

.Slol'ipile (L. MSdlipila, the ball of HSSlus), 
a spherical vessel of metal, with a pipe of 
small aperture, through which the vapour 
of heated water in the ball passes out with 
considerable noise; or having two nozzles so 
placed that the steam rushing out causes it 
to revolve on the principle of the Barker’s 
mill. It was known to the ancient Greeks. 

iE'olus, in Greek mythology, the god of 
the winds, which he kept confined in a cave 
in the yHolian Islands, releasing them when 
he wished or was commanded by the supe¬ 
rior gods. 

JE on, a Greek word signifying life, an 
age, and sometimes eternity, but used by 
the Gnostics to express spirits or powers 
that had emanated from the Supreme Mind 
before the beginning of time. They held 
both Christ and the Holy Spirit to be aeons; 
but as they denied the divine origin of the 
books of Moses, they said that the spirit 
which had inspired him and the prophets 
was not that exalted aeon whom God sent 
forth after the ascension of Christ, but an 
aeon very much inferior, and removed at a 
great distance from the Supreme Being. 

iEpyor'nis, a genus of gigantic birds 
whose remains have been found in Mada¬ 
gascar, where it is supposed to have lived 
perhaps not longer than 200 years ago. It 
had three toes, and is classed with the cur¬ 
sorial birds (ostrich, &c.). Its eggs measured 
14 inches in length, being about six times 
the bulk of those of the ostrich. The bird 
which laid them may well have been the 
roc of Eastern tradition. 

IE! qui, an ancient people of Italy, con¬ 
spicuous in the early wars of Rome, and in¬ 
habiting the mountain district between the 
upper valley of the Anio (Teverone) and 
Lake Fucfnus. They were probably akin 
to the Volscians, with whom they were in 


constant alliance. They were defeated by 
Cincinnatus in B.C. 458, and again by the 
dictator Postumus Tubertus in b.c. 428, 
and were finally subdued about b.c. 304-302. 
Soon after they were admitted to Roman 
citizenship. 

A erated Bread, bread which receives its 
sponginess or porosity from carbonic acid 
supplied artificially, and not produced by 
the fermentation caused by leaveD or yeast. 

A'erated Waters, waters impregnated 
with carbonic acid gas, and forming effervesc¬ 
ing beverages. Some mineral waters are na¬ 
turally aerated, as Vichy, Apollinaris, Ros- 
bach, &c.; others especially, such as are 
used for medicinal purposes, are frequently 
aerated to render them more palatable and 
exhilarating. Water simply aerated, or aer¬ 
ated and flavoured with lemonade or fruit 
syrups, is largely used, especially in summer, 
as a refreshing beverage. There are numer¬ 
ous varieties of apparatus for manufacturing 
aerated waters. An easily-worked, port¬ 
able apparatus, called a gazogene, can now 
be readily procured, in which these waters 
can be cheaply produced at home, the gas 
being generated by bicarbonate of soda and 
tartaric acid. The essential parts of an 
aerated-water machine are a generator, in 
which the gas is produced, a vessel contain¬ 
ing the water to be impregnated, and an 
apparatus for forcing the gas into the water. 
This last may be effected by force-pumps or 
by the high pressure of the impregnating 
gas itself. The quantity of gas with which 
the water is charged is usually equal to a 
pressure of 5 atmospheres. 

Ae'rians, the followers of Aerius, who in 
the fourth century originated a small heret¬ 
ical sect, objecting to the established feast- 
days, the distinction between bishops and 
presbyters, prayers for the dead, &c. 

Aerodynamics, a branch of physical 
science, which treats of the properties and 
motions of elastic fluids (air, gases), and of 
the appliances by which these are exempli¬ 
fied. This subject is often explained in 
connection with hydrodynamics. 

Aeroe, or Arroe (ar'eu-e), an island of 
Denmark, in the Little Belt, 15 miles long 
by 5 broad, with 12,000 inhabitants. Though 
hilly, it is very fertile. 

A'erolite, a meteoric stone, meteorite, or 
shooting-star. See Meteoric Stones. 

Aeronau'tics, the art of sailing in or navi¬ 
gating the air. The first form in which the 
idea of aerial locomotion naturally suggested 
itself was that of providing men with wings 

42 




AERONAUTICS 


by which they should be enabled to fly. It 
is now, however, the general opinion of 
scientific men that it is impossible for man 
by his muscular strength alone to give 
motion to wings of sufficient extent to keep 
him suspended in the air. But although the 
muscles of man may be of insufficient strength 
to enable him to use such wings, there yet 
remains the possibility of making a flying 
car, elevated and propelled by machinery, 
or a boat to float in the air. From time to 
time many large machines have been planned 
and constructed with the intention of giv¬ 
ing their occupants the power of navigating 
the atmosphere at pleasure as the sea is navi¬ 
gated by ships; but hitherto all have failed 
owing to the impracticability of supporting 
in mid-air a sufficient weight of machinery 
to provide the necessary power for propelling 
and steering purposes. The navigation of 
the air by means of the balloon dates only 
from nearly the close of the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. In 1766 Henry Cavendish showed 
that hydrogen gas was at least seven times 
lighter than ordinary air, and it at once 
occurred to Dr. Black of Edinburgh that a 
thin bag filled with this gas would rise in 
the air, but his experiments were for some 
reason unsuccessful. Some years afterwards 
Tiberius Cavallo found that a bladder was 
too heavy and paper too porous, but in 1782 
he succeeded in elevating soap-bubbles by 
inflating them with hydrogen gas. In this 
and the following year two Frenchmen, the 
brothers Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, 
acting on the observation of the suspension 
of clouds in the atmosphere and the ascent of 
smoke, were able to cause several bags to 
ascend by rarefying the air within them by 
means of a fire below. These experiments 
roused much attention at Paris; and soon 
after a balloon was constructed under the 
superintendence of Professor Charles, which 
being inflated with hydrogen gas rose over 
3000 feet in two minutes, disappeared in 
the clouds, and fell after three quarters 
of an hour about 15 miles from Paris. These 
Montgolfier and Charles balloons already 
represented the two distinct principles in 
respect to the source of elevating power, the 
one being inflated with common air rarefied 
by heat, requiring a fire to keep'up the rare¬ 
faction, the other being filled with gas lighter 
at a common temperature than air, and thus 
rendered permanently buoyant. Both forms 
were used for a considerable time, but the 
greater safety and convenience of the gaseous 
inflation finally prevailed. After the use of 

43 


coal-gas had been introduced it superseded 
hydrogen gas, as being much less expensive, 
though having a far less elevating power. 
The first person who made an ascent in a 
balloon was Pilatre de Rozier, who ascended 
50 feet at Paris in 1783 in one of Mont¬ 
golfier’s. A short time afterwards M. Charles 
and M. Robert ascended in a balloon inflated 
with hydrogen gas, and travelled a distance 
of 27 miles from the Tuileries; M. Charles 
by himself also ascended to a height of 



Balloon above the Clouds. 

about 2 miles. Since then many ascents 
have been made, with, strange to say, com¬ 
paratively few disastrous results. Among 
the names of the earlier balloonists we 
may mention Lunardi, who first made an 
ascent in Great Britain (Sept. 1784), unless 
we assign this honour to J. Tytler (‘Balloon’ 
Tytler), who seems to have made two short 
ascents from Edinburgh in the preceding 
month; Blanchard, who, along with the 
American Dr. Jeffries, first crossed the 
Channel from Dover to Calais, in Jan. 
1785; Garnerin, who first descended by a 
parachute from a balloon in Oct. 1797; and 
Gay Lussac, who reached the height of 
23,000 feet in Sept. 1804. In 1836 a balloon 
carrying Messrs. Green, Holland, and Mason 
traversed the 500 miles between London and 
Weilburg in Nassau in eighteen hours. Ill 











































AERONAUTICS 


iESCHYLUS. 


1859 Mr. J. Wise, the chief of American 
aeronauts, accompanied by several others, 
rose from New York, and landed, after a 
flight of 1150 miles, in twenty hours. In 
Sept. 1862, the renowned aeronaut, Mr. 
Glaisher, accompanied by Mr. Coxwell, 
made an ascent from Wolverhampton, and 
reached the elevation of 37,000 feet, or 7 
miles, which far exceeds the height hitherto 
attained by any other aerial voyagers. But 
the daring excursionists were for a time in 
great peril, Mr. Glaisher having been in¬ 
sensible for seven minutes, and Mr. Cox¬ 
well having his hands so severely frozen 
that he was unable to pull the valve for 
descent with them, and was compelled to use 
his teeth.—All the features of the balloon 
as now used are more or less due to Pro¬ 
fessor Charles, already mentioned. The 



Balloon Car of Coxwell and Glaisher. 


balloon is a large pear-shaped bag, made 
of pliable silk cloth, covered with a varnish 
of caoutchouc dissolved in oil of turpentine 
to render it air-tight. The ordinary size of 
the bag ranges from 20 to 30 feet in equa¬ 
torial diameter, with a proportionate height, 
but a balloon of 100 feet in diameter and 
130 feet in height has been constructed. A 
car, generally of wicker-work, supported by 
a net-work which extends over the balloon, 
contains the aeronaut; and a valve, usually 
placed at the top, to which is attached a 
string reaching the car, gives him the power 
of allowing the gas to escape, whereby the 
balloon is lowered at pleasure. The problem 
of how to steer or propel a balloon in a 
desired horizontal direction can scarcely be 
said to have been satisfactorily solved. 
Balloons of a fish or cigar shape, floated 
by gas, propelled by a screw driven by a 
dynamo - electric machine, and steered by 
a large rudder, made several ascents in 
Paris in 1884 and 1885, and it is claimed 


for them that they have settled the ques¬ 
tion of the practicability of aerial naviga¬ 
tion, but this seems doubtful.—Balloons 
have been used for taking both meteorologi¬ 
cal and military observations with consider¬ 
able success. During the siege of Paris in 
1870-71 over sixty persons (including Gam- 
betta) and innumerable letters left the city 
in balloons. 

Aerostatic Press, a simple contrivance 
for rendering the pressure of the atmosphere 
available for extracting the colouring matter 
from dye-woods and similar purposes. A 
horizontal partition divides the machine 
into two parts. The lower part is connected 
with an air-pump, by means of which the 
air can be withdrawn from it. The matter 
from which the substance is to be extracted 
is laid upon the partition, which is perfor¬ 
ated, and a perforated cover is placed over 
it. Upon this the liquid intended to form 
the extract is poured, and, the pump being 
worked, the air is extracted from the lower 
vessel and by the pressure of the atmosphere 
the liquid is forced through the intervening 
mass, carrying the colour or other soluble 
matter with it. 

Aerostat'ics, that branch of physics which 
treats of the weight, pressure, and equili¬ 
brium of air and gases. See A ir, A ir-pump, 
Barometer, Gas, &c. 

iEschines (es'ki-nez), a celebrated Athe¬ 
nian orator, the rival and opponent of De¬ 
mosthenes, was born 390 B.C. and died in 
314. He headed the Macedonian party in 
Greece, or those in favour of an alliance 
with Philip, while Demosthenes took the 
opposite side. Having failed in B.c. 330 in 
a prosecution against Ctesiphon for propos¬ 
ing to bestow a crown of gold upon Demos¬ 
thenes for his services to the state (whence 
the oration of Demosthenes On the Crown) 
he withdrew from Athens. Latterly he 
established a school of eloquence at Rhodes. 
Three of his orations are extant. 

.Aeschylus (es'lci-lus), the first in time of 
the three great tragic poets of Greece, born 
at Eleusis, in Attica, B.c. 525, died in Sicily 
456. Before he gained distinction as a 
dramatist he had highly distinguished him¬ 
self at the battle of Marathon (490), as he 
afterwards did at Artemisium, Salamis, and 
Plataea. He first gained the prize for 
tragedy in B.c. 484. The Persians, the 
earliest of his extant pieces, formed part of 
a trilogy which gained the prize in B.c. 472. 
In b.c. 468 he was defeated by Sophocles, 
and then is said to have gone to the court 

44 




























AlSCULAPiUS - 

of Hiero, king of Syracuse. Altogether he 
is reputed to have composed seventy trage¬ 
dies and gained thirteen triumphs. Only 
seven of his tragedies are extant: the Per¬ 
sians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, 
Prometheus, Agamemnon, Choephori, and 
Eumenides, the last three forming a trilogy 
on the story of Orestes, represented in B.c. 
458. .Aeschylus may be called the creator 
of Greek tragedy, both from the splendour 
of his dramatic writings, and from the 
scenic improvements and accessories he 
introduced. Till his time only one actor 
had appeared on the stage at a time, and 
by bringing on a second he was really the 
founder of dramatic dialogue. His style was 
grand, daring, and full of energy, though 
sometimes erring in excessive splendour of 
diction and imagery, if not indeed harsh or 
turgid. His plays have little or no plot, 
and his characters are drawn by a few 
powerful strokes. There are English poet¬ 
ical translations of his plays by Blackie, 
Plumptre, and Swanwick. 

^Iscula'pius (Gr. Asklepios), the god of 
medicine among the Greeks and latterly 
adopted by the Romans, usually said to 
have been a son of Apollo. He was wor¬ 
shipped in particular at Epidaurus, in Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, where a temple with a grove was 
dedicated to him. The sick who visited 
his temple had to spend one or more nights 
in the sanctuary, after which the remedies 
to be used were revealed in a dream. Those 
who were cured offered a sacrifice to Hilscu- 
lapius, commonly a cock. He is often re¬ 
presented with a large beard, holding a 
knotty staff, round which is entwined a ser¬ 
pent, the serpent being specially his symbol. 
Near him often stands a cock. Sometimes 
HSsculapius is represented under the image 
of a serpent only. 

iEs'culus, the genus of plants to which 
belongs the horse-chestnut. 

JE'sop, the Greek fabulist, is said to have 
been a contemporary of Croesus and Solon, 
and thus probably lived about the middle 
of the sixth century B.c. But so little is 
known of his life that his existence has been 
called in question. He is said to have been 
originally a slave, and to have received his 
freedom from a Samian master, Iadmon. 
He then visited the court of Croesus, and 
is also said to have visited Pisistratus at 
Athens. Finally he was sent by Croesus 
to Delphi to distribute a sum of money to 
each of the citizens. For some reason he 
refused to distribute the money, whereupon 

45 


— AESTHETICS. 

the Delphians, enraged, threw him from 
a precipice, and killed him. No works of 
H£sop are extant, and it is doubtful whether 
he wrote any. Bentley inclined to the sup¬ 
position that his fables were delivered 
orally and perpetuated by repetition. Such 
fables are spoken of both by Aristophanes 
and Plato. Phsedrus turned into Latin 
verse the Aesopian fables current in his day, 
with additions of his own. In modern times 
several collections bearing to be HEsop’s 
fables have been published. 

iEsthet'ics (Gr. aisthetikos, pertaining to 
perception), the philosophy of the beauti¬ 
ful; the name given to the branch of phil¬ 
osophy or of science which is concerned with 
that class of emotions, or with those attri¬ 
butes, real or apparent, of objects generally 
comprehended under the term beauty , and 
other related expressions. The term aesthe¬ 
tics first received this application from 
Baumgarten (1714-1762), a German phi¬ 
losopher, who was the first modern writer 
to treat systematically on the subject, 
though the beautiful had received attention 
at the hands of philosophers from early 
times. Socrates, according to Xenophon, 
regarded the beautiful as coincident with 
the good, and both as resolvable into the 
useful. Plato, in accordance with his ideal¬ 
istic theory, held the existence of an abso¬ 
lute beauty, which is the ground of beauty 
in all things. He also asserted the intimate 
union of the good, the beautiful, and the 
true. Aristotle treated of the subject in 
much more detail than Plato, but chiefly 
from the scientific or critical point of 
view. In his treatises on Poetry and 
Rhetoric he lays down a theory of art, 
and establishes principles of beauty. His 
philosophical views were in many respects 
opposed to those of Plato. He does not 
admit an absolute conception of the beauti¬ 
ful; but he distinguishes beauty from the 
good, the useful, the fit, and the necessary. 
He resolves beauty into certain elements, 
as order, symmetry, definiteness. A dis¬ 
tinction of beauty, according to him, is the 
absence of lust or desire in the pleasure it 
excites. Beauty has no utilitarian or ethical 
object; the aim of art is merely to give 
immediate pleasure; its essence is imitation. 
Plotinus agrees with Plato, and disagrees 
with Aristotle, in holding that beauty may 
subsist in single and simple objects, and 
consequently in restoring the absolute con¬ 
ception of beauty. He differs from Plato 
and Aristotle in raising art above nature. 


Esthetics 


iETOLtA. 


Baumgarten’s treatment of aesthetics is es¬ 
sentially Platonic. He made the division 
of philosophy into logic, ethics, and aesthe¬ 
tics; the first dealing with knowledge, the 
second with action (will and desire), the 
third with beauty. He limits aesthetics 
to the conceptions derived from the senses, 
and makes them consist in confused or 
obscured conceptions, in contradistinction 
to logical knowledge, which consists in 
clear conceptions. Kant defines beauty 
in reference to his four categories, quan¬ 
tity, quality, relation, and modality. In 
accordance with the subjective character 
of his system he denies an absolute concep¬ 
tion of beauty, but his detailed treatment 
of the subject is inconsistent with the 
denial. Thus he attributes a beauty to 
single colours and tones, not on any plea of 
complexity, but on the ground of purity. 
He holds also that the highest meaning of 
beauty is to symbolize moral good, and 
arbitrarily attaches moral characters to the 
seven primary colours. The value of art 
is mediate, and the beauty of art is inferior 
to that of nature. The treatment of beauty 
in the systems of Schelling and Hegel could 
with difficulty be made comprehensible with¬ 
out a detailed reference to the principles 
of these remarkable speculations. English 
writers on beauty are numerous, but they 
rarely ascend to the heights of German 
speculation. Shaftesbury adopted the notion 
that beauty is perceived by a special internal 
sense; in which he was followed by Hutche¬ 
son, who held that beauty existed only in 
the perceiving mind, and not in the object. 
Numerous English writers, among whom 
the principal are Alison and Jeffrey, have 
supported the theory that the source of 
beauty is to be found in association—a 
theory analogous to that which places mor¬ 
ality in sympathy. The ability of its sup¬ 
porters gave this view a temporary popu¬ 
larity, but its baselessness has been effec¬ 
tively exposed by successive critics. Dugald 
Stewart attempted to show that there is no 
common quality in the beautiful beyond that 
of producing a certain refined pleasure; and 
Bain agrees with this criticism, but endea¬ 
vours to restrict the beautiful within a group 
of emotions chiefly excited by association 
or combination of simpler elementary feel¬ 
ings. Herbert Spencer has a theory of beauty 
which is subservient to the theory of evolution. 
He makes beauty consist in the play of the 
higher powers of perception and emotion, 
defined as an activity not directly subser¬ 


vient to any processes conducive to life, but 
being gratifications sought for themselves 
alone. He classifies aesthetic pleasures ac¬ 
cording to the complexity of the emotions 
excited, or the number of powers duly exer¬ 
cised; and he attributes the depth and ap¬ 
parent vagueness of musical emotions to 
associations with vocal tones built up during 
vast ages. Among numerous writers who 
have made valuable contributions to the 
scientific discussion of aesthetics may be 
mentioned Winckelmann, Lessing, Richter, 
the Schlegels, Gervinus, Helmholtz, and 
Ruskin. 

^Estiva'tion, a botanical term applied to 
the arrangement of the parts of a flower in 
the flower-bud previous to the opening of 
the bud.—The term is also applied to the 
summer sleep of animals. See Dormant 
State. 

JEth'eling. See Atheling. 

iE'ther. See Ether. 

^Ethiopia. See Ethiopia. 

.^E'thrioscope (Gr. aithrios, clear, cloud¬ 
less), an instrument for measuring radia¬ 
tion towards a clear sky, consisting of a 
metallic cup with a highly-polished interior 
of paraboloid shape, in the focus of which 
is placed one bulb of a differential thermo¬ 
meter, the other being outside. The inside 
bulb at once begins to radiate heat when 
exposed to a clear sky, and the extent to 
which this takes place is shown by the scale 
of the thermometer. The asthrioscope also 
indicates the presence of invisible aqueous 
vapour in the atmosphere, radiation being 
less than when the air is dry. 

AEthu'sa, a genus of umbelliferous plants. 
See Fool's Parsley. 

Ae'tius, a general of the western Roman 
Empire, born a.d. 396; murdered 454. As 
commander in the reign of Valentinian III. 
he defended the empire against the Huns, 
Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians, &c., com¬ 
pletely defeating the first in particular under 
Attila in a great battle at Chalons in 451. 
For twenty years he was at the head of pub¬ 
lic affairs, and latterly was murdered by 
Valentinian from jealousy of his power. 

iEt'na. See Etna. 

iEto'lia, a western division of northern 
Greece, separated on the west by the 
Achelous from Acarnania and washed by 
the Corinthian Gulf on the south. The 
inhabitants are little heard of in Greek his¬ 
tory till the Peloponnesian war, at which 
time they were notorious among the Greeks 
for the rudeness of their manners. iEtolia, 

46 







70 


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30 


0 
I 20- 



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%/- • ^ J. *»r:, i-/ii ^ i&Khtr*e£r~ 


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Tropic of Cancel- .St** 


Gr. ofKachh^ 

leas el IM AFGHANISTAN 

AND 

BALUCHISTAN 
Euglisk 

Too 


20 


60 


Longitude K« »t ^ ° f Greenwich 

GeFFie & Co. Philadelphia 


70 



































































AFFIDAVIT-AFGHANISTAN. 


in conjunction with Acarnania, now forms 
a nomarchy of the kingdom of Greece. 

Affida'vit, a written statement of facts 
upon oath or affirmation. Affidavits are 
generally made use of when evidence is to 
be laid before a judge or a court, while 
evidence brought before a jury is delivered 
orally. The person making the affidavit 
signs his name at the bottom of it, and 
swears that the statements contained in it 
are true. The affidavit may be sworn to in 
open court, or before a magistrate or other 
duly qualified person. 

Affinity, in chemistry, the force by which 
unlike kinds of matter combine so intimately 
that the properties of the constituents are 
lost, and a compound with new properties 
is produced. Of the force itself we know 
little or nothing. It is not the same under 
all conditions, being very much modified by 
circumstances, especially temperature. The 
usual effect of increase of temperature is to 
diminish affinity and ultimately to cause the 
separation of a compound into its constitu¬ 
ents; and there is probably for every com¬ 
pound a temperature above which it could 
not exist but would be broken up. Where 
two elements combine to form a compound 
heat is almost always evolved, and the 
amount evolved serves as a measure of the 
affinity. In order that chemical affinity may 
come into play it is necessary that the sub¬ 
stances should be in contact, and usually 
one of them at least is a fluid or a gas. 
The results produced by chemical combina¬ 
tion are endlessly varied. Colour, taste, 
and smell are changed, destroyed, or created; 
harmless constituents produce strong poi¬ 
sons, strong poisons produce harmless com¬ 
pounds. 

Affinity, in law, is that degree of con¬ 
nection which subsists between one of 
two married persons and the blood relations 
of the other. It is no real kindred 
(consanguinity). A person cannot, by legal 
succession, receive an inheritance from 
a relation by affinity; neither does it 
extend to the nearest relations of husband 
and wife so as to ci'eate a mutual relation 
between them. The degrees of affinity are 
computed in the same way as those of con¬ 
sanguinity or blood. All legal impediments 
arising from affinity cease upon the death 
of the husband or wife, excepting those 
which relate to the marriage of the survivor. 

Affirmation, a solemn declaration by 
Quakers and others, who object to taking 
an oath, in confirmation of their testimony 

47 


in courts of law, or of their statements oil 
other occasions on which the sanction of an 
oath is required of other persons. In Eng¬ 
land the form for Quakers is, ‘I do solemnly, 
sincerely, and truly declare and affirm.’ 
Affirmation is generally allowed to be sub¬ 
stituted for an oath in all cases where a 
person refuses to take an oath from con¬ 
scientious motives, if the judge is satisfied 
that the motives are conscientious. False 
affirmation is subjected to the same penal¬ 
ties as perjury. 

Affrique (af-rek), St., a town of southern 
France, department of Aveyron. Pop. 5364. 

Afghanistan (af gan'i-stan), that is, the 
land of the Afghans, a country in Asia, 
bounded on the east by Kashmir and the 
Punjab, on the south by Beluchistan, on 
the west by the Persian province of Kho- 
rasan, and on the north by Bokhara and 
Russian Turkestan. In part the boundaries 
are not well defined, but recently that from 
the Ox us to the Persian frontier has been 
surveyed and marked by boundary stones 
by a joint Russian and British commission. 
The area may be set down at about 280,000 
sq. miles. The population is estimated at 
between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000. Afghan¬ 
istan consists chiefly of lofty, bare, unin¬ 
habited table-lands, sandy barren plains, 
ranges of snow-covered mountains, offsets 
of the Hindu Kush Or the Himalayas, and 
deep ravines and valleys. Man} 7 of the 
last are well watered and very fertile, but 
about four-fifths of the whole surface is 
rocky, mountainous, and unproductive. The 
surface on the north-east is covered with 
lofty ranges belonging to the Hindu Kush, 
whose heights are often 18,000 and some¬ 
times reach perhaps 25,000 feet. The whole 
north-eastern portion of the country has a 
general elevation of over 6000 feet; but 
towards the south-west, in which direction 
the principal mountain chains of the in¬ 
terior run, the general elevation declines to 
not more than 1600 feet. In the interior the 
mountains sometimes reach the height of 
15,000 ft. Great part of the frontier towards 
India consists of the Suleiman range, 12,000 
feet high. There are numerous practic¬ 
able avenues of communication between 
Afghanistan and India, among the most 
extensively used being the famous Khyber 
Pass, by which the river Cabul enters 
the Punjab; the Gomul Pass, also lead¬ 
ing to the Punjab; and the Bolan Pass on 
the south, through which the route passes 
to Sind. Of the rivers the largest is the 



AFGHANISTAN. 


Helmund, which flows in a south-westerly 
direction more than 400 miles, till it enters 
the Hamoon or Seistan swamp. It receives 
the Arghandab, a considerable stream. 
Next in importance are the Cabul in the 
north-east, which drains to the Indus, and 
the Hari Rud in the north-west, which, like 
other Afghan streams, loses itself in the sand. 
The climate is extremely cold in the higher, 
and intensely hot in the lower regions, yet on 
the whole it 
is salubrious. 

The most com¬ 
mon trees are 
pines, oaks, 
birch, and wal¬ 
nut. In the val¬ 
leys fruits, in 
the greatest va¬ 
riety and abun¬ 
dance, grow 
wild. The prin¬ 
cipal crops are 
wheat, forming 
the staple food 
of the people; 
barley,rice, and 
maize. Other 
crops are to¬ 
bacco, sugar¬ 
cane, and cot¬ 
ton. The chief 
domestic ani¬ 
mals are the 
dromedary, the 
horse, ass, and 
mule, the ox, 
sheep with 
large fine flee¬ 
ces and enor¬ 
mous fat tails, 
and goats; of wild animals there are 
the tiger, bears, leopards, wolves, jackal, 
hyaena, foxes, &c. The chief towns are 
Cabul (the capital), Kandahar, Ghuzni, and 
Herat. The inhabitants belong to different 
races, but the Afghans proper form the 
great mass of the people. They are allied in 
blood to the Persians, and are divided into a 
number of tribes, among which the Duranis 
and Ghiljis are the most important. The Af¬ 
ghans are bold, hardy, and warlike, fond of 
freedom and resolute in maintaining it, but 
of a restless, turbulent temper, and much 
given to plunder. Tribal dissensions are 
constantly in existence, and seldom or never 
do all the Afghans pay allegiance to the 
nominal ruler of their country. Their lan¬ 


guage is distinct from the Persian, though 
it contains a great number of Persian words, 
and is written, like the Persian, with the 
Arabic characters. In religion they are 
Mohammedans of the Sunnite sect. 

The history of Afghanistan belongs almost 
to modern times. The collective name of 
the country itself is of modern and external 
origin (Persian). In 1738 the country was 
conquered by the Persians under Nadir 

Shah. On his 
death in 1747 
Ahmed Shah, 
one of his gen¬ 
erals, obtained 
the sovereignty 
of Afghanistan, 
and became 

the founder of 
a dynasty, 

which lasted 
about eighty 
years. At the 
end of that 
time Dost Mo¬ 
hammed, the 
ruler of Cabul, 
had acquired a 
preponderating 
influence in the 
country. On 
account of his 
dealings with 
the Russians 
the British re¬ 
solved to de¬ 
throne him and 
restore Shah 
Shuja, a for¬ 
mer ruler. In 
April, 1839, a 
British army under Sir John Keane entered 
Afghanistan, occupied Cabul, and placed 
Sbah Shuja on the throne, a force of 8000 
being left to support the new sovereign. Sir 
W. Macnaghten remained as envoy at Cabul, 
with Sir Alexander Burnes as assistant en¬ 
voy. The Afghans soon organized a wide¬ 
spread insurrection, which came to a head on 
Nov. 2,1841, when Burnes and a number of 
British officers, besides women and children, 
were murdered, Macnaghten being mur¬ 
dered not long after. The other British lead¬ 
ers now made a treaty with the Afghans, at 
whose head was Akbar, son of Dost Moham¬ 
med, agreeing to withdraw the forces from 
the country, while the Afghans were to fur¬ 
nish them with provisions and escort them 

48 



Afghans of the Durani Tribe. 


































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AFGHANISTAN 


AFRICA. 


on their way. On 6th January, 1842, the 
British left Cabul and began their most 
disastrous retreat. The cold was intense, 
they had almost no food—for the treacher¬ 
ous Afghans did not fulfil their promises— 
and day after day they were assailed by 
bodies of the enemy. By the 13th 26,000 
persons, including camp-followers, women 
and children, were destroyed. Some were 
kept as prisoners, but only one man, Dr. 
Brydon, reached Jelalabad, which, as well 
as Kandahar, was still held by British 
troops. In a few months General Bollock, 
with a fresh army from India, retook Cabul 
and soon finished the war. Shah Shuja 
having been assassinated, Dost Mohammed 
again obtained the throne of Cabul, and 
acquired extensive power in Afghanistan. 
He joined with the Sikhs against the Bri¬ 
tish, but latterly made an offensive and 
defensive alliance with the latter. He died 
in 1863, having nominated his son Sliere 
Ali his successor. Shere Ali entered into 
friendly relations with the British, but in 
1878, having repulsed a British envoy 
and refused to receive a British mission 
(a Russian mission being meantime at his 
court), war was declared against him, and 
the British troops entered Afghanistan. 
They met with comparatively little resis¬ 
tance; the ameer fled to Turkestan, where 
he soon after died; and his son Yakoob Khan 
having succeeded him concluded a treaty 
with the British (at Gandamak, May, 1879), 
in which a certain extension of the British 
frontier, the control by Britain of the foreign 
policy of Afghanistan, and the residence of 
a British envoy in Cabul, were the chief 
stipulations. Not long after this settlement 
‘the British resident at Cabul, Sir Louis P. 
Cavagnari, and the other members of the 
mission were treacherously attacked and 
slain by the Afghans, and troops had again 
to be sent into the country. Cabul was 
again occupied, and Kandahar and Ghazni 
were also relieved; while Yakoob Khan was 
sent to imprisonment in India. In 1880 
Abdur-Rahman, a grandson of Dost Mo¬ 
hammed, was recognized by Britain as emir 
of the country, and has since been on 
friendly terms with the British, by whom 
he is subsidized. Recent encroachments by 
the Russians on territory claimed by Afghan¬ 
istan almost brought about a rupture be¬ 
tween Britain and Russia in 1885, and has 
led to the delimitation of the frontier of 
Afghanistan on the side next the territory 
now occupied by Russia. 

VOL. I. 49 


Afium - Kara - Hissar (‘ opium - black - 
castle’), a city of Asiatic Turkey, 170 miles 
E.s.E. of Constantinople, with manufactures 
of woollens, and a trade in opium {afium), 
&c. Pop. about 20,0o0. 

Afrag'ola, a town of Italy, about 6 miles 
n.n.e. of Naples. Pop. 19,149. 

Afra'nius, Lucius, a Roman comic dra¬ 
matist who flourished about the beginning 
of the first century B.c., and of whose writ¬ 
ings only fragments remain. 

Africa, one of the three great divisions of 
the Old World, and the second in extent of 
the five pi'incipal continents of the globe, 
forming a vast peninsula joined to Asia by 
the Isthmus of Suez. It is of a compact 
form, with few important projections or in¬ 
dentations, and having therefore a very small 
extent of coast-line (about 16,000 miles, 
or much less than that of Europe) in propor¬ 
tion to its area. This continent extends 
from 37° 20' N. lat. to 34° 50' 8. lat., and the 
extreme points, Cape Blanco and Cape 
Agulhas, are nearly 5000 miles apart. From 
west to east, between Cape Verde, Ion. 
17° 34' w.,and Cape Guardafui, Ion. 5L16'e., 
the distance is about 4600 miles. The area 
is estimated at 11,500,000 square miles, or 
more than three times that of Europe. The 
islands belonging to Africa are not numer¬ 
ous, and, except Madagascar, none of them 
are large. They include Madeira, the Ca¬ 
naries, Cape Verde Islands, Fernando Po, 
Prince's Island, St. Thomas, Ascension, St. 
Helena, Mauritius, Bourbon, the Comoros, 
Socotra, &c. 

The interior of Africa is as yet imper¬ 
fectly known, but we know enough of the 
continent as a whole to be able to point to 
some general features that characterize it. 
One of these is that almost all round it at 
no great distance from the sea, and, roughly 
speaking, parallel with the coast-line, we 
find ranges of mountains or elevated lands 
forming the outer edges of interior plateaux. 
The most striking feature of Northern 
Africa is the immense tract known as the 
Sahara or Great Desert, which is inclosed 
on the north by the Atlas Mountains (great¬ 
est height, 12,000 to 13,000 feet), the pla¬ 
teau of Barbary and that of Barca, on 
the east by the mountains along the west 
coast of the Red Sea, on the west by the 
Atlantic Ocean, and on the south by the 
Soudan. The Sahara is by no means the sea 
of sand it has sometimes been represented: it 
contains elevated plateaux and even moun¬ 
tains radiating in all directions, with habit- 


AFRICA. 


able valleys between. A considerable no¬ 
madic population is scattered over the 
habitable parts, and in the more favoured 
regions there are settled communities. The 
Soudan, which lies to the south of the 
Sahara, and separates it from the more 
elevated plateau of Southern Africa, forms 
a belt of pastoral country across Africa, and 
includes the countries on the Niger, around 
Lake Tchad (or Chad), and eastw ards to the 
elevated region of Abyssinia. Southern 
Africa as a whole is much more fertile and 
well watered than Northern Africa, though 
it also has a desert tract of considerable ex¬ 
tent (the Kalahari Desert). This division 
of the continent consists of a table-land, or 
series of table-lands, of considerable eleva¬ 
tion and great diversity of surface, exhibit¬ 
ing hollows filled with great lakes, and 
terraces over which the rivers break in falls 
and rapids, as they find their way to the 
low-lying coast tracts. The mountains 
which inclose Southern Africa are mostly 
much higher on the east than on the west, 
the most northerly of the former being 
those of Abyssinia, with heights of 10,000 
to 14,000 or 16,000 feet, while the eastern 
edge of the Abyssinian plateau presents a 
steep unbroken line of 7000 feet in height 
for many hundred miles. Farther south, 
and between the great lakes and the Indian 
Ocean, we find Mounts Kenia and Kiliman¬ 
jaro (19,500 ft.), the loftiest in Africa, 
covered with perpetual snow. Of the con¬ 
tinuation of this mountain boundary we 
shall only mention the Drakenberg Moun¬ 
tains, which stretch to the southern extrem¬ 
ity of the continent, reaching in Cathkin 
Peak, Natal, the height of over 10,000 feet. 
Of the mountains that form the western 
border the highest are the Cameroon Moun¬ 
tains, which rise to a height of 13,000 feet, 
at the inner angle of the Gulf of Guinea. 
The average elevation of the southern pla¬ 
teau is probably from 3000 to 4000 feet. 

The Nile is the only great river of Africa 
which flows to the Mediterranean. It re¬ 
ceives its waters primarily from the great 
lake Victoria Nyanza, which lies under the 
equator, and in its upper course is fed 
by tributary streams of great size, but for 
the last 1200 miles of its course it has not a 
single affluent. It drains an area of more 
than 1,000,000 square miles. The Indian 
Ocean receives numerous rivers; but the 
only great river of South Africa which 
enters that ocean is the Zambesi, the fourth 
in size of the continent, and having in 


its course the Victoria Falls, one of the 
greatest waterfalls in the world. In South¬ 
ern Africa also, but flowing westward and 
entering the Atlantic, is the Congo, which 
takes origin from a series of lakes and 
marshes in the interior, is fed by great 
tributaries, and is the first in volume of all 
the African rivers, carrying to the ocean 
more water than the Mississippi. Unlike 
most of the African rivers, the mouth of the 
Congo forms an estuary. Of the other 
Atlantic rivers, the Senegal, the Gambia, 
and the Niger are the largest, the last being 
third among African streams. 

With the exception of Lake Tchad there 
are no great lakes in the northern division of 
Africa, whereas in the number and magnifi¬ 
cence of its lakes the southern division almost 
rivals North America. Here are the Vic¬ 
toria and Albert Nyanza, Lakes Tangan¬ 
yika, Nyassa, Shirwa, Bangweolo, Moero, 
and other lakes. Of these the Victoria and 
Albert belong to the basin of the Nile; 
Tanganyika, Bangweolo, and Moero to that 
of the Congo; Nyassa, by its affluent the 
Shird,to the Zambesi. Lake Tchad on the bor¬ 
ders of the northern desert region, and Lake 
Ngami on the borders of the southern, have 
a remarkable resemblance in position, and 
in the fact that both are drained by streams 
that lose themselves in the sand. 

The climate of Africa is mainly influenced 
by the fact that it lies almost entirely within 
the tropics. In the equatorial belt, both north 
and south, rain is abundant and vegetation 
very luxuriant, dense tropical forests pre¬ 
vailing for about 10“ on either side of the 
line. To the north and south of the equa¬ 
torial belt the rainfall diminishes, and the 
forest region is succeeded by an open pas¬ 
toral and agricultural country. This is 
followed by the rainless regions of the 
Sahara on the north and the Kalahari De¬ 
sert on the south, extending beyond the 
tropics, and bordering on the agricultural 
and pastoral countries of the north and 
south coasts, which lie entirely in the tem¬ 
perate zone. The low coast regions of 
Africa are almost everywhere unhealthy, 
the Atlantic coast within the tropics being 
the most fatal region to Europeans. 

Among mineral productions may be men¬ 
tioned gold, which is found in the rivers of 
West Africa (hence the name Gold Coast), 
and in Southern Africa, but rarely in much 
abundance; diamonds have been found in 
large numbers in recent years in the south; 
iron, copper, lead, tin, and coal are also 

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AFRICA. 


found.—Among plants are the baobab, the 
date-palm (important as a food plant in the 
north), the doum-palm, the oil-palm, the 
wax-palm, the shea-butter tree, trees yield¬ 
ing caoutchouc, the papyrus, the castor-oil 
plant, indigo, the coffee-plant, heaths with 
beautiful flowers, aloes, &c. Among culti¬ 
vated plants are wheat, maize, millet, and 
other grains, cotton, coffee, cassava, ground- 
nut, yam, banana, tobacco, various fruits, &c. 
As regards both plants and animals, northern 
Africa, adjoining the Mediterranean, is dis¬ 
tinguished from the rest of Africa in its 
great agreement with southern Europe.— 
Among the most characteristic African 
animals are the lion, hyena, jackal, gorilla, 
chimpanzee, baboon, African elephant (never 
domesticated, yielding much ivory to trade), 
hippopotamus, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, 
quagga, antelopes in great variety and im¬ 
mense numbers. — Among birds are the 
ostrich, the secretary-bird or serpent-eater, 
the honey-guide cuckoo, sacred ibis, guinea 
fowl.—The reptiles include the crocodile, 
chameleon, and serpents of various kinds, 
some of them very venomous. Among insects 
are locusts, scorpions, the tsetse-fly whose 
bite is so fatal to cattle, and white-ants. 

The great races of which the population of 
Africa mainly consists are the Hamites, the 
Semites, the Negroes, and the Bantus. To 
the Semitic stock belong the Arabs, who 
form a considerable portion of the popula¬ 
tion in Egypt and along the north coast, 
while a portion of the inhabitants of Abys¬ 
sinia are of the same race (though the blood 
is considerably mixed). The Hamites are 
represented by the Copts of Egypt, the 
Berbers, Kabyles, &c., of Northern Africa, 
and the Somali, Danakil, &c., of East Africa. 
The Negro races occupy a vast territory in 
the Soudan and Central Africa, while the 
Bantus occupy the greater part of Southern 
Africa from a short distance north of the 
equator, and include the Kaffres, Bechuanas, 
Swahili, and allied races. In the extreme 
south-west are the Hottentots and Bushmen 
(the latter a dwarfish race), distinct from 
the other races as well as, probably, from 
each other. In Madagascar there is a large 
Malay element. To these may be added the 
Fulahs on the Niger and the Nubians on the 
Nile and elsewhere, who are of a brownish 
colour, and are often regarded as distinct 
from the other races, though sometimes 
classed with the Negroes. In religion 
a great proportion of the inhabitants are 
heathens of the lowest type; Mohara- 

51 


medanism numbers a large number of ad¬ 
herents in North Africa, and is rapidly 
spreading in the Soudan; Christianity pre¬ 
vails only among the Copts, the Abyssinians, 
and the natives of Madagascar, the latter 
having been converted in recent times. 
Elsewhere the missionaries seem to have 
made but little progress. Over great part 
of the continent civilization is at a low 
ebb, yet in some parts the natives have 
shown considerable skill in agriculture and 
various mechanical arts, as in weaving 
and metal working. Of African trade 
two features are the caravans that traverse 
great distances, and the trade in slaves that 
still widely prevails, and is accompanied by 
an immense amount of bloodshed. Among 
articles exported from Africa are palm-oil, 
diamonds, ivory, ostrich feathers, wool, cot¬ 
ton, esparto, caoutchouc, &c. The total 
population is estimated at 200,000,000. Of 
these a small number are of European origin 
—French in Algeria, British and Dutch at 
the southern extremity. 

The chief independent states in Africa 
are Marocco, Bornu, Waday, Bagirmi, Da¬ 
homey, Liberia, the Congo State, South 
African Republic, Orange River Free 
State. In 1891 Portugal annexed part 
of Lunda. To Great Britain belong the 
colonies of the Cape and Natal with 
some large adjoining tracts, also Sierra 
Leone and other settlements on the west 
coast, a part of the coast of the Gulf 
of Aden, Sokotra, and Mauritius; to 
France belong Algeria and Tunis, Sene- 
gambia, and a considerable territory north 
of the lower Congo; the Portuguese possess 
the west coast of South Africa from 
about lat. 6' s. to 17°s., and the east coast 
from about 10° s. to 27° s.; Germany now 
has a portion of the south-west coast and 
another tract near Zanzibar; to Turkey 
nominally belong Egypt, Barca, and Tri¬ 
poli ; Spain has a part of the coast of the 
Sahara. The Congo State is under the sov¬ 
ereignty of the King of Belgium ; Abys¬ 
sinia is an Italian protectorate ; Sokoto is 
governed by the Royal Niger Co.; Zanzi¬ 
bar in 1890 became a British protectorate. 

The name Africa was given by the Ro¬ 
mans at first only to a small district in the 
immediate neighbourhood of Carthage. The 
Greeks called Africa Libya, and the Ro¬ 
mans often used the same name. The first 
African exploring expedition on record was 
sent by Pharaoh Necho about the end of 
the seventh century b.c. to circumnavigate 


AFRICA. 


the continent. The navigators, who were 
Phoenicians, were absent three years, and 
according to report they accomplished their 
object. Fifty or a hundred years later, 
Hanno, a Carthaginian, made a voyage 
down the west coast and seems to have got 
as far as the Bight of Benin. The east 
coast was probably known to the ancients 
as far as Mozambique and the island of 
Madagascar. Of modern nations the Por- 
tuguese were the first to take in hand the 
exploration of Africa. In 1433 they doubled 
Cape Bojador, in 1441 reached Cape Blanco, 
in 1442 Cape Verde, in 1462 they discovered 
Sierra Leone. In 1484 the Portuguese 
Diego Cam discovered the mouth of the 
Congo. In 1486 Bartholomew Diaz rounded 
the Cape of Good Hope and reached Algoa 
Bay. A few years later a Portuguese tra¬ 
veller visited Abyssinia. In 1497 Vasco da 
Gama, who was commissioned to find a 
route by sea to India, sailed round the 
southern extremity as far as Zanzibar, dis¬ 
covering Natal on his way. The first Euro¬ 
pean settlements were those of the Portu¬ 
guese in Angola and Mozambique, soon 
after 1500. In 1650 the Dutch made a 
settlement at the Cape. In 1770 James 
Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile 
in Abyssinia. For the exploration of the 
interior of Africa, however, little was done 
before the close of last century. 

Modern African exploration maybe said to 
begin with Mungo Park, who reached the 
upper course of the Niger (1795-1805). Dr. 
Lacerda, a Portuguese, about the same time 
reached the capital of the Cazembe, in the 
centre of South Africa, where he died. In 
1802-6 two Portuguese traders crossed the 
continent from Angola, through the Ca- 
zembe’s dominions, to the Portuguese pos¬ 
sessions on the Zambesi. In 1822-24 ex¬ 
tensive explorations were made in Northern 
and Western Africa by Denham, Clapper- 
ton, and Oudney, who proceeded from Tri¬ 
poli by Murzuk to Lake Tchad, and explored 
the adjacent regions; Laing, in 1826, crossed 
the desert from Tripoli toTimbuctoo;Caillid, 
leaving Senegal, made in 1827-28 a journey 
to Timbuctoo, and thence through the de¬ 
sert to Marocco. In 1830 Lander traced a 
large part of the course of the Niger down¬ 
ward to its mouth, discovering its tributary 
the Benue. In the south Livingstone, who 
was stationed as a missionary at Kolobeng, 
setting out from that place in 1849 dis¬ 
covered Lake Ngami. In 1851 he went 
north again, and came upon numerous rivers 


flowing north, affluents of the Zambesi. In 
1848 and 1849 Krapf and Rebinann, mis¬ 
sionaries in East Africa, discovered the 
mountains Kilimanjaro and Kenia. An 
expedition sent out by the British govern¬ 
ment started from Tripoli in 1850 to visit 
the Sahara and the regions around Lake 
Tchad, the chiefs being Richardson, Over- 
weg, and Barth. The last alone returned 
in 1855, having carried his explorations 
over 2,000,000 sq. miles of this part of 
Africa, hitherto almost unknown. In 1853 
-56 Livingstone made an important series 
of explorations. He first went north-west¬ 
wards, tracing part of the Upper Zambesi, 
and reached St. Paul de Loanda on the 
west coast in 1854. On his return journey 
he followed pretty nearly the same route 
till he reached the Zambesi, and proceeding 
down the river, and visiting its falls, called 
by him the Victoria Falls, he arrived at 
Quilimane at its mouth on 20th May, 1856, 
thus crossing the continent from sea to sea. 
In 1858 he resumed his exploration of the 
Zambesi regions, and in various journeys 
visited Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, sailed up 
the Shire to the latter lake, and established 
the general features of the geography of 
this part of Africa, returning to England in 
1864. By this time the great lakes of 
equatorial Africa were becoming known, 
Tanganyika and Victoria having been dis¬ 
covered by Burton and Speke in 1858, and 
the latter having been visited by Speke and 
Grant in 1862 and found to give rise to the 
Nile, while the Albert Nyanza was dis¬ 
covered by Baker in 1864. In 1866 Living¬ 
stone entered on his last great series of ex¬ 
plorations, the main object of which was to 
settle the position of the water-sheds in the 
interior of the continent, and which he car¬ 
ried on till his death in 1873. His most 
important explorations on this occasion were 
west and south-west of Tanganyika, includ¬ 
ing the discovery of Lakes Bangweolo and 
Moero, and part of the upper course of the 
river Congo (here called Lualaba). For 
over two years he was lost to the knowledge 
of Europe till met with by H. M. Stanley 
at Tanganyika in 1871. Gerhard Rohlfs, 
in a succession of journeys from 1861 to 
1874 has traversed the Sahara in various 
directions, and has crossed the continent 
entirely from Tripoli to Lagos by way of 
Murzuk, Bornu, &c. In 1873-75 Lieut. 
Cameron, who had been sent in search of 
Livingstone, surveyed Lake Tanganyika, 
explored the country to the west of it, and 

52 


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AGA-- AGARIC. 


then travelling to the south-west, finally 
reached Benguela on the Atlantic coast. In 
1874-77 Stanley surveyed Lakes Victoria 
Nyanza and Tanganyika and explored the 
intervening country, then going westward 
to where Livingstone had struck the Congo 
he followed the river down to its mouth, 
thus finally settling its course and complet¬ 
ing a remarkable and valuable series of ex¬ 
plorations. In 1879 Serpa Pinto completed 
a journey across the continent from Ben¬ 
guela to Natal, and in 1881-82 Wissman 
and Pogge crossed it again from St. Paid 
de Loanda to Zanzibar. In the past few 
years our knowledge of this part of Africa 
has been rapidly increased through the efforts 
of travellers, missionaries, and commercial 
agents, and it is surprising at how many 
points already white men may be found 
stationed. On the Upper Congo there are 
now some six steamers, on Tanganyika 
three, on Nyassa two. Stanley’s latest mis¬ 
sion to Africa (1887-1889), ostensibly to res¬ 
cue Emin Bey, will prove most important 
in results, the full measure of which we 
cannot yet surmise. It appears to have 
been a great diplomatic move for conquest. 

Ag'ades, a town of Africa, near the middle 
of the Sahara, capital of the Kingdom of 
Air or Asben; at one time a seat of great 
traffic, probably containing 60,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, now with a pop. of about 6000. 

Agallochum (a-gal'o-kum), a fragrant 
wood obtained from Aloexylon Agattuchum, 
a leguminous tree of Cochin-china, and 
Aquildria Agallucha , a large tree inhabiting 
north-east Bengal, abounding in resin and 
an essential oil which yields a perfume used 
as incense. 

Agal'matolite (Gr. agalma , image), a kind 
of stone, a clay-slate altered by heat and 
by the addition of alkalies, which is carved 
into images, &c., by the Chinese. 

Ag'ama, a name of several lizards allied 
to the iguana, natives of both hemispheres. 

Agamem'non, in Greek mythology, son of 
Atreus, King of Mycenae and Argos, brother 
of Menelaus, and commander of the allied 
Greeks at the siege of Troy. Returning 
home after the fall of Troy, lie was treach¬ 
erously assassinated by his wife, Clytem- 
nestra, and her paramour, ^Egisthus. He 
was the father of Orestes, Ipbigenla, and 
Electra. 

Ag'ami. See Trumpeter. 

Agamogenesis (-jen'e-sis; Gr. a, priv., 
gcimos , marriage, genesis , reproduction), the 
production of young without the congress 

53 


of the sexes, one of the phenomena of alter¬ 
nate generation. See Generation. 

Aganippe (-nip'e), a fountain on Mount 
Helicon, in Greece, sacred to the Muses, 
which had the property of inspiring with 
poetic fire whoever drank of it. 

Agape (ag'a-pe; Gr. agape , love), in 
ecclesiastical history, the love-feast or feast 
of charity, in use among the primitive 
Christians, when a liberal contribution was 
made by the rich to feed the poor. During 
the three first centuries love-feasts were 
held in the churches without scandal, but 
in after-times the heathen began to tax 
them with impurity, and they were con¬ 
demned at the Council of Carthage in 397. 
Some modern sects, as the Wesleyans, San- 
demanians, Moravians, &c., have attempted 
to revive this feast. 

Agapemone (ag-a-pem'o-ne; lit. ‘theabode 
of love’), the name of a singular conventual 
establishment which has existed at Spaxton, 
near Bridgewater, Somersetshire, since 1859, 
the originator of it being a certain Henry 
James Prince, at one time a clergyman of 
the Church of England, who called himself 
the Witness of the First Resurrection. The 
life spent by the inmates appears to be a 
sort of religious epicureanism. Some of 
the proceedings of the inmates of the ‘Abode 
of Love’ have resulted in applications to 
the courts of law, where parties formerly 
members of the society have returned to 
the world and sought to regain their rights 
from Prince and his followers, and such 
cases have caused some scandal; but the sect 
has been scarcely heard of for some years. 

A'gar-a'gar, a dried sea-weed of the 
Asiatic Archipelago, the Gracilaria lichen¬ 
oides , much used in the East for soups and 
jellies, and also by the paper and silk 
manufacturers of Eastern Asia as an ingre¬ 
dient in some classes of their goods. 

Agar'ic (Agarlcus), a large and important 
genus of fungi, characterized by having a 
fleshy cap or pileus, and a number of radiating 
plates or gills on which are produced the 
naked spores. The majority of this species 
are furnished with stems, but some are at¬ 
tached to the objects on which they grow by 
their pileus. Over a thousand species are 
known, and are arranged in five sections ac¬ 
cording as the colour of their spores is white, 
pink, brown, purple, or black. Many of the 
species are edible, like the common mush¬ 
room {A. campestris), and supply a delicious 
article of food, while others are deleterious 
and even poisonous. 


AGARIC MINERAL-AGATFION. 


Agaric Mineral, or Mountain-meal, one 
of the purest of the native carbonates of lime, 
found chietiy in the clefts of rocks and at 
the bottom of some lakes in a loose or semi- 
indurated form resembling a fungus. The 
name is also applied to a stone of loose con¬ 
sistence found in Tuscany, of which bricks 
may be made so light as to float in water, 
and of which the ancients are supposed to 
have made their floating bricks. It is a 
hydrated silicate of magnesium, mixed with 
lime, alumina, and a small quantity of 
iron. 

Aga'sias, a Greek sculptor of Ephesus, 
about 400 B.c., whose celebrated statue, 
known as the Borghese Gladiator, represent¬ 
ing a soldier contending w r ith a horseman, is 
now in the Louvre, Paris. 

Agassiz (ag'as-e), Louis John Rudolph, 
an eminent naturalist, born 1807, died 1873, 
son of a Swiss Protestant clergyman at 
Motiers, near the eastern extremity of the 
Lake of Neufchatel. He completed his 
education at Lausanne, and early developed 
a love of the natural sciences. Pie studied 
medicine at Ziirich, Heidelberg, and Munich. 
His attention was first specially directed to 
ichthyology by being called on to describe 
the Brazilian fishes brought to Europe from 
Brazil by Martius and Spix. This work 
was published in 1829, and was followed in 
1830 by Histoire Naturelle des Poissons 
d’eaux donees de 1’Europe Centrale (Fresh¬ 
water Fishes of Central Europe). Directing 
his attention to fossil ichthyology, five vol¬ 
umes of his Recherches sur les Poissons 
Fossiles appeared between 1834 and 1844. 
His researches led him to propose a new 
classification of fishes, which he divided into 
four classes, distinguished by the characters 
of the skin, as ganoids, placoids, cycloids, 
and ctenoids. His system has not been 
generally adopted, but the names of his 
classes have been used as useful terms. In 
1833 he began the study of glaciers, and in 
1840 he published his Etudes sur les Glaciers, 
in 1847 his Systeme Glaciaire. From 1838 
he had been professor of natural history at 
Neufchatel, when in 1846 pressing solicita¬ 
tions and attractive offers induced him to 
settle in America, where he was connected 
as a teacher first with Harvard University, 
Cambridge, and latterly with Cornell Uni¬ 
versity as well as Harvard. After his 
arrival in America he engaged in various 
investigations and explorations, and pub¬ 
lished numerous works,including: Principles 
of Zoology, in connection with Dr. A. Gould 


(1848); Contributions to the Natural History 
of the United States (four vols. 1857-62); 
Zoologie G^n^rale (1854); Methods of Study 
in Natural History (1863). In 1865-66 he 
made zoological excursions and investiga¬ 
tions in Brazil, which were productive of 
most valuable results. Agassiz held views 
on many important points in science differ¬ 
ent from those which prevailed among the 
scientific men of the day, and in particular 
he strongly opposed the evolution theory. 

Agassiz (ag'a-se), Mount, an extinct vol¬ 
cano in Arizona, U.S., 10,000 feet in height; 
a place of summer resort, near the Great 
Canon of the Colorado. 

Ag'ate, a siliceous semi-pellucid com¬ 
pound mineral, consisting of bands or layers 
of various colours blended together, the base 
generally being chalcedony, and this mixed 
with variable proportions of jasper, amethyst, 
quartz, opal, heliotrope, and carnelian. The 
varying manner in which these materials 
are arranged causes the agate when polished 
to assume some characteristic appearances, 
and thus certain varieties are distinguished, 
as the ribbon agate, the fortification agate, 
the zone agate, the star agate, the moss 
agate, the clouded agate, &c. In Scotland 
they are cut and polished under the name 
of Scottish pebbles. 

Agathar'chus, a Greek painter, native of 
Samos, the first to apply the rules of per¬ 
spective to theatrical scene-painting; flou¬ 
rished about 480 b.c. 

Agath'ias, a Greek poet and historian, 
born at Myrina, Asia Minor, about 536 a.d. ; 
author of an anthology, a collection of love 
poems, and a history (553-558 A.D.), which, 
with all its blemishes, is a valuable chronicle 
of events during an eventful period of 
Roman history. 

Agathocles (a-gath'o-klez), a Sicilian 
Greek, one of the boldest adventurers of 
antiquity, born 361 B.c. By his ability 
and energy, and being entirely unscrupulous, 
he raised himself from the position of a 
potter to that of sovereign of Syracuse and 
master of Sicily. Wars with the Cartha¬ 
ginians were the chief events of his life. 
He died (was poisoned) at the age of 
seventy-two, or, as some say, ninety-five. 

Ag'athon, or Agatho, a Greek tragic poet, 
a friend of Euripides, and contemporary 
with Socrates and Alcibiades, bom about 
447 b.c., died about 400 b.c. f J he dinner 
which he gave to celebrate his first dramatic 
victory was made the groundwork of Plato’s 
Symposium. 


54 


AGAVE 


AGE. 


Agave (a-gS/ve), a genua of plants, nat. 
order Amaryllidaceae (which includes the 
daffodil and narcissus), popularly known as 
American aloes. They are generally large, 
and have a massive tuft of fleshy leaves with 
a spiny apex. They live for many years— 
ten to seventy according to treatment—be¬ 
fore flowering. When this takes place the tall 



flowering stem springs from the centre of 
the tuft of leaves, and grows very rapidly 
until it reaches a height of 15, 20, or even 
40 feet, bearing towards the end a large 
number of flowers. The best-known species 
is A. americana (common American aloe), 
introduced into Europe 1561, and now ex¬ 
tensively grow n in the warmer parts of this 
continent as well as in Asia (India in par¬ 
ticular). This and other species yield various 
important products. The sap when fer¬ 
mented yields a beverage resembling cider, 
called by the Mexicans pulque. The leaves 
are used for feeding cattle; the fibres of the 
leaves (sometimes called pita hemp or flax) 
are formed into thread, cord, and ropes; an 
extract from the leaves is used as a substi¬ 
tute for soap; slices of the withered flower- 
stem are used as razor-strops. 

Agde (agd), a seaport of southern France, 
department of Herault, W'ith a cathedral, 
an ancient and remarkable structure. The 

55 


trade, chiefly coasting, is extensive. Pop. 
7507. 

Age, a period of time representing the 
whole or a part of the duration of any indi¬ 
vidual thing or being, but used more speci¬ 
fically in a variety of senses. In law age 
is applied to the periods of life when men 
and women are enabled to do that which 
before, for want of years and consequently 
of judgment, they could not legally do. A 
male at twelve years old may take the oath 
of allegiance; at fourteen is at years of dis¬ 
cretion, and therefore may consent or dis¬ 
agree to marriage, may choose his guardian, 
may be an executor, although he cannot 
act until of age; and at twenty-one is at his 
own disposal, and may alienate and devise 
his lands, goods, and chattels. A female 
also at seven years of age may be betrothed 
or given in marriage; at fourteen, is at 
years of legal discretion, and may choose a 
guardian; at seventeen may be an executrix; 
and at twenty-one may dispose of herself 
and her lands. So that full age in male 
or female is twenty-one years, which age is 
completed on the day preceding the anni¬ 
versary of a person’s birth, w'ho till that 
time is an infant, and so styled in law. The 
law of Scotland divides life into three periods 
—pupilarity, minority, and majority. The 
first extends up to the time of legal puberty, 
that is, twelve years for a female and four¬ 
teen for a male, when they may marry; the 
second extends from this point up to twenty- 
one years, which is the time when majority 
is attained. 

The term is also applied to designate 
the successive epochs or stages of civili¬ 
zation in history or mythology. Hesiod 
speaks of five distinct ages:—1. The golden 
or Saturnian age , a patriarchal and peaceful 
age. 2. The silver age , licentious and wicked. 
3. The brazen age, violent, savage, and war¬ 
like. 4. The heroic age, which seemed an 
approximation to a better state of things. 
5. The iron age, when justice and honour 
had left the earth. The term is also used 
in such expressions as the dark ages, the 
middle ages, the Elizabethan agt, &c. 

The Archaeological Ages or Periods are 
three—the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and 
the Iron Age, these names being given in ac¬ 
cordance with the materials chiefly employed 
for weapons, implements, &c., during the par¬ 
ticular period. The Stone Age of Europe 
has been subdivided into two—the Palaeo¬ 
lithic or earlier, and Neolithic or later. The 
w r ord age in this sense has no reference to 


















AGEN-AGINCOURT. 


the lapse of time, but simply denotes the 
stage at which a people has arrived in its 
progress towards civilization; thus there 
are races still in their stone age. 

Agen (a-zhan), one of the oldest towns in 
France, capital of dep. Lot-et-Garonne, on 
the Garonne, 74 miles south-east of Bor¬ 
deaux;, see of a bishop; manufactures sail¬ 
cloth, woollens and linens, &c., and has an 
extensive trade. Pop. 17,098. 

A'gent, a person appointed by another to 
act for or perform any kind of business for 
hi in, the latter being called in relation to 


the former the principal. An agent may 
be general or special. The acts of a gen¬ 
eral agent bind his principal, although the 
agent may violate his private instructions. 
An agent, without special authority, can¬ 
not appoint another person in his stead. 

Agerattim (a-jer'a-tum), a genus of com¬ 
posite plants of the warmer parts of Ame¬ 
rica, one species of which, A. mexicanum , is 
a well-known flower - border annual with 
dense lavender-blue heads. 

Agesilaus (a-jes-i-la'us), a king of Sparta, 
born in 442 B.C., and elevated to the throne 



The Field of Agincourt—From a drawing by John Absolon. 


after the death of his brother Agis II. 
He acquired renown by his exploits against 
the Persians, Thebans, and Athenians. 
Though a vigorous ruler, and almost adored 
by his soldiers, he was of small stature and 
lame from his birth. He died in Egypt in 
the winter of 361 -360 B.c. Xenophon, 
Plutarch, and Cornelius Nepos are among 
his biographers. 

Agglom'erate, in geology, a collective 
name for masses consisting of angular frag¬ 
ments ejected from volcanoes. When the 
mass consists of fragments worn and rounded 
by water it is called a conglomerate. 

Agglutinate Languages, languages in 
which the^iodifying suffixes are, as it were, 
glued on to the root, both it and the suf¬ 
fixes retaining a kind of distinctive in¬ 
dependence and individuality, as in the 
Tur kish and other Turanian languages, and 
the Basque language. 

Agg'regate, a term applied in geology to 
rocks composed of several different mineral 
constituents capable of being separated by 


mechanical means, as granite, where the 
quartz, felspar, and mica can be separated 
mechanically.—In botany it is applied to 
flowers composed of many small florets hav¬ 
ing a common undivided receptacle, the 
anthers being distinct and separate, the 
florets commonly standing on stalks, and 
each having a partial calyx. 

Aghrim, or Aughrim (a'grim), a village 
in the county of Galway in Ireland, memor¬ 
able for a decisive victory gained in the 
neighbourhood, July 12, 1691, by the forces 
of William III.,underGinkel, over the Irish 
and French troops under St. Ruth. 

Agila (ag'i-la), a resinous perfume ob¬ 
tained apparently from Aquilaria Agallo- 
chum. See Agallochum. 

Agincourt (a-zhan-kor), a village of Nor¬ 
thern France, department Pas de Calais, 
famous for the battle of October 25, 1415, 
between the French and English. Henry 
V., king of England, eager to conquer 
France, landed at Harfleur, took the place 
by storm, and wished to march through 

56 
































AGNOMEN. 


AGIO 


Picardy to Calais, but was met by a French 
army under the Constable D’Albret. The 
English numbered about 15,000 men, while 
the French numbers are variously stated at 
from 50,000 to 150,000. The confined nature 
and softness of the ground were to the dis¬ 
advantage of the French, who were drawn 
up in three columns unnecessarily deep. The 
English archers attacked the first division in 
front and in flank, and soon threw them into 
disorder. The second division fled on the 
fall of the Due d’Alengon, who was struck 
down by Henry himself; and the third divi¬ 
sion fled without striking a blow. Of the 
French 10,000 were killed, including the 
Constable d’Albert, with six dukes and 
princes. The English lost 1600 men killed, 
among them the Duke of York, Henry’s 
uncle. After the battle the English con¬ 
tinued their march to Calais. 

Agio (a'ji-o), the difference between the 
real and the nominal value of money, as 
between paper-money and actual coin: an 
Italian term originally. Hence agiotage, 
speculation on the fluctuating differences 
in such values. 

Agira (a-je'ra), a town of Sicily south¬ 
west of Etna, anciently Agyrium. Pop. 
13,698. 

Agis (a'jis), the name of four Spartan 
kings, the most important of whom was 
Agis IV., who succeeded to the throne in 
B.c. 244, and reigned four years. He at¬ 
tempted a reform of the abuses which had 
crept into the state—his plan comprehend¬ 
ing a redistribution of the land, a division 
of wealth, and the cancelling of all debts. 
Opposed by his colleague Leonidas, advan¬ 
tage was taken of his absence in an expe¬ 
dition against the HCtolians, to depose him. 
Agis at first took sanctuary in a temple, 
but he was entrapped and hurriedly exe¬ 
cuted by his rival. 

Agitators, an erroneous form of Adju - 
tutors. 

Aglaia (a-gla'ya), in Greek mythology, 
one of the three Graces. 

Agnano (a-nya'no), formerly a lake of 
Italy west of Naples, occupying probably 
the crater of an extinct volcano, but now 
drained. 

Ag'nates, in the civil law relations on the 
male side, in opposition to cognates, relations 
on the female side. 

Agnes, St., a saint, who, according to 
the story, suffered martyrdom because she 
steadfastly refused to marry the son of the 
prefect of Rome, and adhered to her reli¬ 

57 


gion in spite of repeated temptations and 
threats, a.d. 303. She was first led to the 
stake, but as the flames did not injure her 
she was beheaded. Her festival is cele¬ 
brated on the 21st of January. 

Agnesi (a-nva'se), Maria Gaetana, a 
learned Italian lady, born at Milan in 1718. 
In her ninth year she was able to speak 
Latin, in her eleventh Greek ; was a Uni¬ 
versity professor. She died in 1799. 

Agnew, D. Hayes, surgeon, was born 
in Lancaster co., Pa., Nov. 24, 1818. An 
accomplished surgeon, lie was a specialist 
on diseases of the eye and of women. He 
was a profound anatomist, and had won¬ 
derful skill and ease in operating. Sym¬ 
pathetic and gentle, he was an ideal phy¬ 
sician and consultant. He was emeritus 
professor of surgery and honorary professor 
of clinical surgery at University of Penn¬ 
sylvania. He died March 22, 1892. 

Ag'ni, the Hindu god of fire, one of the 
eight guardians of the world, and especially 



the lord of the south-east quarter. He is 
celebrated in many of the hymns of the Rig 
Veda. He is often represented as of a red 
or flame colour, and rides on a ram or a 
goat. He is still worshiped as the personi¬ 
fication of fire. 

Agnolo, Baccio d’ (bach'o-dan'yo-lo), a 
Florentine wood-carver, sculptor, and archi¬ 
tect ; designed some of the finest palaces, 
&c., in Florence, such as the Villa Borghese, 
the Palais Bartolini, &c.; born 1460, died 
1543. 

Agno'men (L.), an additional name given 
by the Romans to an individual in allusion 








AGNONE-AGRA. 


to some quality, circumstance, or achieve¬ 
ment by which he was distinguished, as 
Africanus added to P. Cornelius Scipio. 

Agnone (a-nyo'na), a town of S. Italy, 
prov. of Molise, famous for the excellence 
of its copper ware3. Pop. 6389. 

Agnostics (ag-nos'tiks; Gr. a, not, gig- 
noskein , to know), a modem term applied 
to those who disclaim any knowledge of God 
or of the origin of the universe, holding that 
the mind of man is limited to a knowledge 
of phenomena and of what is relative, and 
that, therefore, the infinite, the absolute, and 
the unconditioned being beyond all experi¬ 
ence, are consequently beyond its range. 

Agnus Castus, a shrub, Vitex Agnus- 
castus, nat. ord. Yerbenacese, a native of the 
Mediterranean countries, with white flowers 
and acrid, aromatic fruits. It had anciently 
the imagined virtue of preserving chastity 
—hence the term castus (L., chaste). 

Agnus Dei (de'i; L., ‘ the Lamb of God’), 
a term applied to Christ in John i. 29, and 
in the Roman Catholic liturgy a prayer be¬ 
ginning with the words ‘Agnus Dei,’ gener¬ 
ally sung before the communion. The term 
is also commonly given to a medal, or more 
frequently a cake of wax, consecrated by 
the pope, stamped with the figure of a lamb 
supporting the banner of the cross; supposed 
to possess great virtues, such as preserving 
those who carry it in faith from accidents, 
&c. 

Agon'ic Line (Gr. a, not, and gonia , an 
angle), in terrestrial magnetism a name ap¬ 
plied to the line which joins all the places on 
the earth’s surface at which the needle of the 
compass points due north and south, with¬ 
out any declination. This line, which varies 
from time to time, at present passes through 
S. America and N. America to the Magnetic 
North Pole, thence to the White Sea, south 
through the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and 
Australia to the Southern Magnetic Pole. 

Ag'ony Column, a column in the adver¬ 
tizing sheet of some of the daily journals, 
in which disappearances, losses, mysterious 
appeals and correspondence, and generally 
any advertising eccentricity appear. 

Ag'ora, the market - place of a Greek 
town, corresponding to the Roman forum. 
The Agora of Athens is situated in a valley 
partially inclosed by the Acropolis, Areo¬ 
pagus, Pnyx, and Museum. 

Agos'ta. See Augusta. 

Agouara (a-gu-a'ra), a name given to the 
crab-eating racoon ( Procyon cancrivdrus ) of 
S, America. 


Agoult (a-go), Makie de Flavignt, 
Comtesse d’, a French writer of fiction, his¬ 
tory, politics, philosophy, and art; daughter 
of Viscount de Flavigny; born at Frank¬ 
fort in 1805, died at Paris 1876. She con¬ 
tributed many articles to the Revue des 
Deux - Mondes, &c., under the name of 
Daniel Stern, and wrote Histoire de la 
Revolution de 1848; Trois Journees de 
la Vie de Marie Stuart; Florence and 
Turin, a series of artistic and political 
studies; Dante and Goethe; dialogues, and 
numerous romances, &c. 

Agouta (a-go'ta), Solenodon paradoxus, an 
insectivorous mammal peculiar to Hayti, of 
the tanrec family, somewhat larger than a 



Agouta (Solenodon paradoxus). 


rat. It has the tail devoid of hair and cov¬ 
ered with scales, the eyes small, and an 
elongated nose like the shrews. Another 
species ( S. cubanus) belongs to Cuba. 

Agouti (a-go'ti), the name of several ro¬ 
dent mammals, forming a family by them¬ 
selves, genus Dasyprocta. There are eight 
or nine species, all belonging to S. America 
and the W. Indies. The common agouti, 
or yellow-rumped cavy (D. agouti), is of 
the size of a rabbit. It burrows in the 
ground or in hollow trees, lives on vege¬ 
tables, doing much injury to the sugar¬ 
cane, is as voracious as a pig, and makes a 
similar grunting noise. Its flesh is white 
and well tasted. 

Agra (a'gra), a city of India, in the North¬ 
west Provinces, on the right bank of the 
Jumna, 841 miles by rail from Calcutta. 
It is a well-built and handsome town and 
has various interesting structures, among 
which are the imperial palace, a mass of 
buildings erected by several emperors; the 
Motf Masjid or Pearl Mosque (both within 
the old and extensive fort); the mosque 
called the Jama Masjid (a cenotaph of 
white marble); and, above all, the Taj Mahal, 
a mausoleum of the seventeenth century, 
built by the Emperor Shah Jehan to his 
favourite queen, of white marble, adorned 

58 







AGRAFFE-AGRICULTURE. 


throughout with exquisite mosaics. There 
are several Protestant and Roman Catholic 
churches, a government college, and three 
other colleges or high schools, besides a 
medical college. Agra has a trade in grain, 
sugar, &c., and some manufactures, including 
beautiful inlaid mosaics. It was founded 
in 1566 by the Emperor Akbar, and was 
a residence of the following emperors for 
over a century. Pop. 160,203. The Agra 
division has an area of 10,151 sq. miles, and 
a pop. of 4,834,064. 

Agraffe', a sort of ornamental buckle, 
clasp, or similar fastening for holding to¬ 
gether articles of dress, &c., often adorned 
with precious stones. 

Agram (og'rom), or Zagrab, a city in the 
Austrian Empire, capital of Croatia and 
Slavonia, near the river Save; contains the 
residence of the ban or governor of Croatia 
and Slavonia, government buildings, cathe¬ 
dral (being the see of a Roman Catholic arch¬ 
bishop), university, theatre, &c.; carries on 
an active trade, and manufactures tobacco, 
leather, and linens. Pop. 28,360. 

Agra'phia. See Aphasia. 

Agrarian Laws, laws enacted in ancient 
Rome for the division of the public lands, 
that is, the lands belonging to the state 
(ager publicus). As the territory of Rome 
increased the public land increased, the 
land of conquered peoples being always re¬ 
garded as the property of the conqueror. 
The right to the use of this public land 
belonged originally only to the patricians 
or ruling class, but latterly the claims of 
the plebeians on it w 7 ere also admitted, 
though they were often unfairly treated in 
the sharing of it. Hence arose much dis¬ 
content among the plebeians, and various 
remedial laws were passed with more or 
less success. Indeed an equitable adjust¬ 
ment of the land question between the aris¬ 
tocracy and the common people was never 
attained. 

Agric'ola, Cneius Julius, lived from a.d. 
37 to 93, a Roman consul under the Em¬ 
peror Vespasian, and governor in Britain, 
the greater part of which he reduced to 
the dominion of Rome; distinguished as a 
statesman and general. His life, written by 
his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus, gives 
the best extant account of Britain in the 
early part of the period of the Roman rule. 
He was the twelfth Roman general who 
had been in Britain, but was the only one 
who effectually subdued the southern por¬ 
tion of it and reconciled the Britons to the 

59 


Roman yoke. This he did by teaching them 
the arts of civilization and to settle in towns. 
He constructed the chain of forts between 
the Forth and the Clyde, defeated Gal- 
gacus at the battle of the Grampians, and 
sailed round the island, discovering the 
Orkneys. 

Agric'ola, Georg (originally Bauer, that 
is, cultivator = L. agricola), born in Saxony 
1490, died at Chemnitz 1555, German 
physician and mineralogist. Though tinged 
with the superstitions of his age, he made 
the first successful attempt to reduce miner¬ 
alogy to a science, and introduced many 
improvements in the art of mining. 

Agricola, Johann, the son of a tailor at 
Eisleben, was born in 1492, and called, from 
his native city, master ,of Eisleben (magister 
Islebius ); one of the most active among the 
theologians who propagated the doctrines 
of Luther. In 1537, when professor in 
Wittenberg, he stirred up the Antinomian 
controversy with Luther and Melanchthon. 
He afterwards lived at Berlin, w T here he 
died in 1566, after a life of controversy. 
Besides his theological works he composed 
a work explaining the common German 
proverbs. 

Agricola, Johann Friedrich, German 
musician and composer, born near Altenburg 
1720, died at Berlin 1774; pupil of Sebas¬ 
tian Bach; w’rote several operas, including 
Iphigenia in Tauris. 

Agricola, Rodolphus, German scholar, 
born at Groningen 1442, died at Heidelberg 
1485. After travelling in France and Italy 
he was appointed professor of philosophy at 
Heidelberg, and did good service in trans¬ 
planting the revived classical learning into 
Germany. 

Agriculture is the art of cultivating the 
ground, more especially with the plough 
and in large areas or fields, in order to raise 
grain and other crops for man and beast; 
including the art of preparing the soil, sow¬ 
ing and planting seeds, removing the crops, 
and also the raising and feeding of cattle 
or other live stock. This art is the basis of 
all other arts, and in all countries coeval 
with the first dawn of civilization. At how 
remote a period it must have been success¬ 
fully practised in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and 
China we have no means of knowing. 
Egypt was renowned as a corn country in 
the time of the Jewish patriarchs, who 
themselves were keepers of flocks and herds 
rather than tillers of the soil. Naturally 
little is known of the methods and details 


AGRICULTURE. 


of agriculture in early times. Among the 
ancient Greeks the implements of agricul¬ 
ture were very few and simple. Hesiod, 
who wrote a poem on agriculture as early 
as the eighth century B.C., mentions a 
plough consisting of three parts, the share- 
beam, the draught-pole, and the plough- 
tail, but antiquarians are not agreed as to 
its exact form. The ground received three 
ploughings, one in autumn, another in 
spring, and a third immediately before sow¬ 
ing the seed. Manures were applied, and 
the advantage of mixing soils, as sand with 
clay or clay with sand, was understood. 
Seed was sown by hand, and covered with 
a rake. Grain was reaped with a sickle, 
bound in sheaves, thrashed, then winnowed 
by wind, laid in chests, bins, or granaries, 
and taken out as wanted by the family, to 
be ground. Agriculture was highly esteemed 
among the ancient Romans. Cato, the cen¬ 
sor, who was celebrated as a statesman, 
orator, and general, derived his highest 
honours from having written a voluminous 
work on agriculture. In his Georgies Virgil 
has thought the subject of agriculture 
worthy of being treated in the most grace¬ 
ful and harmonious verse. The Romans 
used a great many different implements of 
agriculture. The plough is represented by 
Cato as of two kinds, one for strong, the 
other for light soils. Varro mentions one 
with two mould-boards, with which, he says, 
‘ when they plough, after sowing the seed, 
they are said to ridge.’ Pliny mentions a 
plough with one mould-board, and others 
with a coulter, of which he says there were 
many kinds. Fallowing was a practice 
rarely deviated from by the Romans. In 
most cases a fallow and a year’s crop suc¬ 
ceeded each other. Manure was collected 
from nearly or quite as many sources -as 
have been resorted to by the moderns. 
Irrigation on a large scale was applied both 
to arable and grass lands. 

The Romans introduced their agricultural 
knowledge among the Britons, and during 
the most flourishing period of the Roman 
occupation large quantities of corn were ex¬ 
ported from Britain to the Continent. Dur¬ 
ing the time that the Angles and Saxons 
were extending their conquests over the 
country agriculture must have been greatly 
neglected; but afterwards it was practised 
with some success among the Anglo-Saxon 
population, especially, as was generally the 
case during the middle ages, on lands belong¬ 
ing to the church. Swine formed at this time 


a most important portion of the live stock, 
finding plenty of oak and beech mast to eat. 
The feudal system introduced by the Nor¬ 
mans, though beneficial in some respects as 
tending to ensure the personal security of 
individuals, operated powerfully against pro¬ 
gress in agricultural improvements. War 
and the chase, the two ancient and deadliest 
foes of husbandry, formed the most pro¬ 
minent occupations of the Norman princes 
and nobles. Thriving villages and smiling 
fields were converted into deer forests, vexa¬ 
tious imposts were laid on the farmers, and 
the serfs had no interest in the cultivation 
of the soil. But the monks of every monas¬ 
tery retained such of their lands as they 
could most conveniently take charge of, and 
these they cultivated with great care, under 
their own inspection, and frequently with 
their own hands. The various operations of 
husbandry, such as manuring, ploughing, 
sowing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, win¬ 
nowing, &c., are incidentally mentioned by 
the wTiters of those days; but it is impos¬ 
sible to collect from them a definite account 
of the manner in which those operations 
w r ere performed. 

The first English treatise on husbandry 
and the best of the early works on the 
subject was published in the reign of 
Henry VIII. (in 1534), by Sir A. Fitzher- 
bert, judge of the Common Pleas. It is 
entitled the Book of Husbandry, and con- • 
tains directions for draining, clearing, and 
inclosing a farm, for enriching the soil, and 
rendei-ing it fit for tillage. Lime, marl, 
and fallowing are strongly recommended. 
r J he subject of agriculture attained some 
prominence during the reign of Elizabeth. 
The principal writers of that period were 
Tusser, Googe, and Sir Hugh Platt. Tus- 
ser’s Five Hundredth Points of Good Hus¬ 
bandry (first complete edition published in 
1580) conveys much useful instruction in 
metre, but few works of this time contain 
much that is original or valuable. The 
first half of the seventeenth century pro¬ 
duced no systematic wmrk on agriculture, 
though several on different branches of the 
subject. About 1645 the field cultivation 
of red clover was introduced into England, 
the merit of this improvement being due to 
Sir Richard Weston, author of a Discourse 
on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders. 
The Dutch had devoted much attention to 
the improvement of winter roots, and also 
to the cultivation of clover and other arti¬ 
ficial grasses, and the farmers and proprie- 

60 





AGRICULTURE. 


tors of England soon saw the advantages 
to be derived from their introduction. The 
cultivation of clover soon spread, and Sir 
Richard Weston seems also to have intro¬ 
duced turnips. Potatoes had been intro¬ 
duced during the latter part of the sixteenth 
century, but were not for long in general 
cultivation. In the eighteenth century the 
first name of importance in British agri¬ 
culture is that of Jethro Tull. Tull was 
a great advocate of the system of sowing 
crops in rows or drills with an interval be¬ 
tween every two or three rows wide enough 
to allow of ploughing or hoeing to be car¬ 
ried on. Robert Bakewell and others ef¬ 
fected some important improvements in 
the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, in 
the latter half of the last century. By 
the end of the century it was a common 
practice to alternate green crops with grain 
crops, instead of exhausting the land with 
a number of successive crops of corn. A 
well-known writer on agriculture at this 
period, and one who did a great deal of 
good in diffusing a knowledge of the sub¬ 
ject, was Arthur Young. During the wars 
caused by the French revolution (1795- 
1814) the high price of agricultural pro¬ 
duce led to an extraordinary improvement 
in agriculture all over Britain. Wheat, 
barley, and oats are the chief cereals in 
Britain; the chief roots are turnips and 
potatoes; other crops (besides grass and 
clover) are beans, peas, mangold, hops, and 
flax. ' In Europe at large the principal 
cereals are wheat, oats, barley, and rye, 
wheat being mostly grown in the middle 
and southern regions, such as France, 
Spain, part of Germany, Austria, Hungary, 
Italy, and southern Russia, the others in 
the more northern portion, while maize is 
grown in the warmest parts. Turnips are 
comparatively little grown out of Britain, 
beet-root in some sense taking their place ; 
potatoes, however, are largely cultivated, 
except in the south. In Canada large 
quantities of wheat are grown (chiefly in 
Ontario, now also in Manitoba); much is 
also now produced in the Australian col¬ 
onies. 

The vast territory of the United States 
presents every variety of soil and climate. 
Its agriculture embraces all the products 
of European cultivation, together with 
some of the warmer countries, as cotton, 
sugar, and indigo. The agricultural im¬ 
plements are, in many respects, similar to 
those of Great Britain and France. But as 
a general rule those of the United States 

61 


exceed all others in their wonderful adap¬ 
tation of machinery for all purposes of 
cultivation and harvesting of crops. So 
successful have been our farming imple¬ 
ments in repeated contests on European 
soil that their rapid introduction into for¬ 
eign markets has been somewhat impeded 
by the great demand at home. The dispo¬ 
sition of the American to experiment, to 
test alleged improvements, and adopt labor- 
saving expedients, gives a great impulse to 
the genius of inventors. This mental ac¬ 
tivity of the American farmer is owing in 
great part to his superior intelligence. 

The American reaper was invented by 
McCormick in 1834 ; by many improve¬ 
ments it has secured the European as well 
as the home market. In 1855 the first 
American agricultural college was estab¬ 
lished. In 1862 the passage of the Home * 
stead law served to accelerate the occupa=> 
tion of the public lands. In the same 
year Congress granted to each State 30,000 
acres for each Senator and Representative 
in Congress “in order to promote the lib¬ 
eral and practical education of the indus¬ 
trial classes.” In 1867 the organization of 
the “ Patrons of Husbandry,” commonly 
called Grangers, was effected, to look after 
the interests of farmers, to reduce the 
profits of middlemen, and to insist on fair 
treatment from the railroads. The Ameri¬ 
can dairy system, based on the principle 
of association, has advanced rapidly. Ag¬ 
ricultural societies, both State and county, 
are established in all parts of the United 
States. The objects of these societies are 
such as the following: to encourage the 
introduction of improvements in agricul¬ 
ture; to encourage the improvement of 
agricultural implements and farm build¬ 
ings ; the application of chemistry to agri¬ 
culture; the destruction of insects injur¬ 
ious to vegetation; to promote the dis¬ 
covery and adoption of new varieties of 
grain, or other useful vegetables; to col¬ 
lect information regarding the manage¬ 
ment of woods, plantations, and fences; to 
improve the education of those supported 
by the cultivation of the soil; to improve 
the veterinary art; to improve the breeds 
of live stock, &c. Fairs are held, at 
which prizes are distributed for live stock, 
implements, and farm produce. 

Through the efforts of the above-men¬ 
tioned and other societies, the investiga¬ 
tions of scientific men, and the general 
diffusion of knowledge among all classes, 
over two hundred periodicals being de- 


AGRICULTURE-AGRIPPA. 


voted to its interests, agriculture has made 
great progress during the present century. 
Among the chief improvements we may 
mention deep ploughing and thorough 
draining. By the introduction of new or 
improved implements the labour necessary 
to the carrying out of agricultural opera¬ 
tions has been greatly diminished. Science, 
too, has been called in to act as the hand¬ 
maid of art, and it is by the investigations 
of the chemist that agriculture has been 
put on a really scientific basis. The or¬ 
ganization of plants, the primary elements 
of which they are composed, the food on 
which they live, and the constituents of 
soils, have all been investigated, and most 
important results obtained, particularly in 
regard to manures and rotations. Artificial 
manures, in great variety, to supply the 
elements wanted for plant growth, have 
come into common use, not only increasing 
the produce of lands previously cultivated, 
but extending the limits of cultivation it¬ 
self. An improvement in all kinds of 
stock is becoming more and more general, 
feeding is conducted on more scientific 
principles, and improved varieties of plants 
used as field crops have been introduced. 
One of the recent innovations in the Uni¬ 
ted States is the introduction of the system 
of ensilage for preserving fodder in a green 
state, which promises to give valuable re¬ 
sults, though it has hardly been tested 
long enough to decide as to its value. 

As a result of the new conditions, to be 
a thoroughly trained and competent agri¬ 
culturist requires a special education, 
partly theoretical, partly practical. In 
particular, no scientific cultivator can now 
be ignorant of agricultural chemistry, 
which teaches the constituents of the va¬ 
rious plants grown as crops, their relation 
to the various soils, the nature and function 
of different manures, &c. In some coun¬ 
tries there are now agricultural schools or 
colleges supported by the state. In the 
United States nearly all the States have 
colleges, or departments of colleges, de¬ 
voted to the teaching of agriculture, and 
large allotments of public land have been 
made for their support. In Germany such 
institutions are numerous and highly effi¬ 
cient. For teaching agriculture practically 
model farms are commonly established. 
In many countries too there is a ministry 
of agriculture as one of the chief depart¬ 
ments of government; but in Britain there 
is only a department of agriculture under 
a committee of the privy-council, which 


collects and publishes very useful statistics. 
In the U. States the Department of Agri¬ 
culture was organized in 1862 ; the Secre¬ 
tary is now a Cabinet officer. In 1892 
appropriation by Congress, $3,282,995. 

The chief crop in value grown in the 
United States is Indian corn, next to which 
comes wheat. Oats and potatoes are also 
important crops. The grass crop exceeds 
in value any other, except wheat and corn. 
The other principal crops, of which great 
quantities are grown, are, barley, rye, buck¬ 
wheat, beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips, and 
sorghum. Tobacco is a favourite crop in 
nearly all sections. Since the war the cul¬ 
tivation of rice has been slow in regaining 
its former prosperity; this is the case also 
with sugar. In cotton the virtual monop¬ 
oly of the Southern States has ceased ; but 
the crop increases steadily in amount each 
year. 

It is only in very recent times that much 
progress has been made in perfecting im¬ 
plements and machinery for cultivating 
the soil, sowing seed, drilling, reaping, &c. 

There exists to-day no prohibition in any 
country against the admission of American 
pork products bearing the certificate of in¬ 
spection of U. S. Department of Agricul¬ 
ture. By proclamation of the Secretary of 
Agriculture (1892) the U. States has been 
declared absolutely free from contagious 
pleuro-pneumouia. Substantial results 
have been derived from efforts made to 
direct the attention of Europe to the uses 
of Indian corn as food for the people. 

Agrigentum (-jen'tum), an ancient Greek 
city of Sicily (the modern Girgenti), founded 
about 580 B. C., and long one of the most 
important places on the island. Extensive 
ruins of splendid temples and public build¬ 
ings yet attest its ancient magnificence. 
See Girgenti. 

Ag'rimony (^gmnowra),agenusofplants, 
natural order Rosacese, consisting of slender 
perennial herbs found in temperate regions. 
A. Eupatoria, or common agrimony, was 
formerly of much repute as a medicine. 
Its leaves and root-stock are astringent, 
and the latter yields a yellow dye. 

Agrip'pa, Cornelius Henry, born in 
1486, at Cologne, was a man of talents, 
learning, and eccentricity. In his youth he 
wassecretary to the Emperor Maximilian I.; 
he subsequently served seven years in Italy, 
and wau knighted. On quitting the army 
he devoted himself to science, and became 
famous as a magician and alchemist, and 
was involved in disputes with the church- 

62 




AGRIPPA -AGULHAS. 


men. After an active, varied, and eventful 
life he died at Grenoble in 1535. 

Agrippa, Herod. See Herod Agrippa. 

Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius, a Roman 
statesman and general, the son-in-law of 
Augustus; born B.c. 63, died B.c. 12. He 
was praetor in B.c. 41; consul in 37, 28, and 
27; aedile in 33; and tribune from 18 till 
his death. He commanded the fleet of 
Augustus in the battle of Actium. To him 
Rome is indebted for three of her principal 
aqueducts, the Pantheon, and several other 
works of public use and ornament. 

Agrippi'na, the name of several Roman 
ladies, among whom we may mention:— 
1. The youngest daughter of Marcus Vip¬ 
sanius Agrippa, and wife of C. Germanicus; 
a heroic woman, adorned with great virtues. 
Tiberius, who hated her for her virtues and 
popularity, banished her to the island of 
Pandataria, where she starved herself to 
death in a.d. 33. — 2. A daughter of the 
last mentioned, and the mother of Nero, by 
Domitius Ahenobarbus. Her third husband 
was her uncle, the Emperor Claudius, whom 
she subsequently poisoned to secure the 
government of the empire through her son 
Nero. After ruling a few years in her son’s 
name he became tired of her ascendency, 
and caused her to be assassinated (a.d. 60). 

Agrostem'ma. See Lychnis. 

Agros'tis, a genus of grasses, consisting 
of many species, and valuable as pasture- 
grasses. The bent-grasses belong to the 
genus. 

Ag'telek, a village in Hungary, near the 
road from Pesth to Kaschau, with about 
600 inhabitants, celebrated for one of the 
largest and most remarkable stalactitic 
caverns in Europe. 

Agua (ag'wa), an active volcano of Cen¬ 
tral America, in Guatemala, rising to the 
height of 15,000 feet. It has twice de- 
stroyed the old city of Guatemala, in its 
immediate vicinity. 

Aguara (a-gwa'ra). See Agouara. 

Aguardiente (a-gwar-de-en'te), a popular 
spirituous beverage of Spain and Portugal, 
a kind of coarse brandy, made from red wine, 
from the refuse of the grapes left in the 
wine-press, &c., generally flavoured with 
anise; also a Mexican alcoholic drink dis¬ 
tilled from the fermented juice of the 
agave. 

Aguas Calientes (ag'was ka-le-en'tas; 
lit. ‘warm waters’), a town 270 miles N.w. 
of Mexi<to, capital of the state of its own 
name, named from the thermal springs near 

63 


it; has manufactures of cottons and a con¬ 
siderable trade. Pop. 25,000. 

Ague (a'gu), a kind of fever, which may be 
followed by serious consequences, but gen¬ 
erally is more troublesome than dangerous. 
According to the length of the interval 
between one febrile paroxysm and another, 
agues are denominated quotidian when they 
occur once in twenty-four hours, tertian 
when they come on every forty-eight hours, 
quartan when they visit the patient once 
in seventy-two hours. Ague arises from 
marsh miasmata, a temperature above 60° 
being, however, apparently required to pro¬ 
duce it. To cure the disease and prevent 
the recurrence, quinine and various other 
bitter and astringent drugs are given with 
complete success in the majority of cases. 

Ague-cake, a tumour caused by enlarge¬ 
ment and hardening of the spleen, often the 
consequence of ague or intermittent fever. 

Aguesseau (a-ges-o), Henri FRANgois d’, 
a distinguished French jurist and statesman, 
born at Limoges in 1668; was in 1690 
advocate-general at Paris, and at the age 
of thirty-two procureur-general of the par¬ 
liament. He risked disgrace with Louis 
XIV. by successfully opposing the famous 
papal bull Unigenitus. He was made 
chancellor in 1717, was deprived of his 
office in 1718 on account of his opposition 
to Law’s system of finance, but had to be 
recalled in 1720. In 1722 he had to retire 
a second time; but was recalled in 1727 by 
Cardinal Fleury, and in 1737 again got 
the chancellorship, which he held till 1750. 
He died in 1751. 

Aguilar (a-ge-lar'), a town of Spain, pro¬ 
vince of Cordova, in Andalusia, in a good 
wine-producing district, and with a trade in 
corn and wine. Pop. 11,836. 

Aguilar (a-gi-lar'), Grace, an English 
writer, born at Hackney 1816, died at 
Frankfort 1847. Of Jewish parentage, she 
at first devoted herself to Jewish subjects, 
but her fame rests on her novels, Home 
Influence, A Mother’s Recompense, Home 
Scenes and Heart Studies, &c., most of 
which were published posthumously under 
the editorship of her mother. 

Aguilas (a-ge'las), a flourishing seaport 
of southern Spain, province of Murcia, with 
copper and lead smelting works. Pop. 8947. 

Agulhas (a-gul'yas), Cape, a promontory, 
forming the most southern extremity of 
Africa, about 90 miles south-east of the 
Cape of Good Hope, rising to 455 feet above 
the sea, with a lighthouse. 



AGUTI 


AIDE-DE-CAMP. 


Agu'ti. See Agouti . 

A'hab, the seventh king of Israel, suc¬ 
ceeded his father Oinri 928 B.C., and reigned 
twenty years. At the instigation of his 
wife Jezebel he erected a temple to Baal, 
and became a cruel persecutor of the true 
prophets. He was killed by an arrow at 
the siege of Ramoth-Gilead. 

Ahag'gar, a mountainous region of the 
Sahara, south of Algeria, with some fertile 
valleys, inhabited by the Tuaregs. 

Ahasue'rus, in Scripture history, a king 
of Persia, probably the same as Xerxes, the 
husband of Esther, to whom the Scriptures 
ascribe a singular deliverance of the Jews 
from extirpation. —Ahasuerus is also a 
Scripture name for Cambyses, the son of 
Cyrus (Ezra iv. 6), and for Astyages, king 
of the Medes (Dan. ix. 1). 

A'haz, the twelfth king of Judah, suc¬ 
ceeded his father Jotham, 742 B.c. For¬ 
saking the true religion he gave himself up 
completely to idolatry, and plundered the 
temple to obtain presents for Tiglath-pileser, 
king of Assyria. 

Ahazi'ah:—1. Son of Ahab and Jezebel, 
and eighth king of Israel, died from a fall 
through a lattice in his palace at Samaria 
after reigning two years (b.c. 896, 895).— 
2. Fifth king of Judah, and nephew of the 
above. He reigned but one year, and was 
slain (b.c. 884) by Jehu. 

Ahith'ophel, privy-councillor to David, 
and confederate and adviser of Absalom in 
his rebellion against his father. When 
Hushai's advice prevailed, Ahithophel, de¬ 
spairing of success, hung himself. 

Ahmedabad, or Ahmadabad (a-mud-a- 
biid), a town of India, presidency of Bom¬ 
bay, in district of its own name, on the left 
bank of the S4barmati, 310 miles north of 
Bombay. It was founded in 1412 by Ah¬ 
med Shah, and was converted by him into 
a great capital, adorned with splendid edi¬ 
fices. It came finally into the hands of the 
British in 1818. It is still a handsome and 
populous place, inclosed by a wall, with 
many'noteworthy buildings; manufactures 
of fine silk and cotton fabrics, cloths of gold 
and silver, pottery, paper, enamel, mother- 
of-pearl, &c. Pop. 127,621.—Area of dist. 
3821 sq.m.; pop. 856,324. 

Ahmednag'ar, a town of India, presidency 
of Bombay, in district of its own name, of 
commonplace appearance, surrounded by an 
earthen wall; with manufactures of cotton 
and silk cloths. Near the city is the fort, 
built of stone and 1| mile round. Pop. 


32,841; including military, 37,492.—Area 
of dist. 6666 sq. m.; pop. 751,228. 

Ahmed Shah, born 1724, died 1773, 
founder of the Durani dynasty in Afghan¬ 
istan. On the assassination of Nadir he 
proclaimed himself shah, and set about sub¬ 
duing the provinces surrounding his realm. 
Among his first acts was the securing of the 
famed Koh-i-noor diamond,which had fallen 
into the hands of his predecessor. He crossed 
the Indus in 1748, and his conquests in 
northern India culminated in the defeat of 
the Mahrattas at Panipat (6th Jan. 1761). 
Affairs in his own country necessitated his 
withdrawal from India, but he extended his 
empire vastly in other directions far beyond 
the limits of modern Afghanistan. He was 
succeeded by his son Timur. 

Ahriman (a'ri-man; in the Zend A ngro- 
mainyus, ‘spirit of evil or annihilation’), 
according to the dualistic doctrine of Zoro¬ 
aster, the origin or the personification of 
evil, sovereign of the Devas or evil spirits, 
lord of darkness and of death, being thus 
opposed toOrmuzd ( Ahuramazda ), the spirit 
of good and of light. 

Ah'was, a small Persian town on the 
river Karun, province of Khuzistan, in the 
immediate neighboux’hood of which are the 
vast ruins of a city, ascribed to the time of 
the Parthian empire,extending for 12 miles 
along the river side. 

Ai (a/e). See Sloth. 

Aid, a subsidy paid in ancient feudal 
times by vassals to their lords on certain 
occasions, the chief of which were: when 
their lord was taken prisoner and required 
to be ransomed, when his eldest son was 
to be made a knight, and when his eldest 
daughter was to be married and required a 
dowry. From the Norman Conquest to the 
fourteenth century the collecting of aids by 
the crown was one of the forms of taxation, 
being latterly regulated by parliament. 

Ai'dan, Saint, Bishop of Lindisfarne, was 
originally a monk of Iona, in which monas¬ 
tery Oswald I., who became king of North- 
umberland in 635, had been educated. At 
the request of Oswald, Aidan was sent to 
preach Christianity to his subjects, and es¬ 
tablished himself in Lindisfarne as the first 
of the line of bishops now designated of 
Durham. He died in 651. 

Aide-de-camp (ad-de-kan), a military 
officer who conveys the orders of a general 
to the various divisions of the army on the 
field of battle, and at other times acts as 
his secretary and general confidential agent. 

64 



AINMILLER. 


AIDIN 


Aidin (a-i-den'), or Guzel Hissar, a town 
in Asiatic Turkey, about 60 miles south-east 
of Smyrna, with which it is connected by 
rail; has fine mosques and bazaars, is the 
residence of a pasha, and has an extensive 
trade in cotton, leather, figs, grapes, &c. 
Pop. 35,000. 

Aigrette' (French), a term used to denote 
the feathery crown attached to the seeds of 
various plants, such as the thistle, dande¬ 
lion, &c. (called in botany pappus ).—It is 
also applied to any head-dress in the form of 
a plume, whether composed of feathers, flow¬ 
ers, or precious stones. 

Aigues Mortes (ag mort; L . Aquce Mor- 
tuce, ‘dead waters’), a small town of southern 
France, near the mouths of the Rhone, de¬ 
partment of Gard; with ancient walls and 
castle; near it are lagoons, from which great 
quantities of salt are made. Pop. 3000. 

Aiguille (a'gwil; Fr., lit. a needle), a 
name given in the Alps to the needle-like 
points or tops of granite, gneiss, quartz, 
and other crystalline rocks and mountain 
masses; also applied to sharp-pointed masses 
of ice on glaciers and elsewhere.—It is also 
the name given to an inaccessible French 
mountain in Isfere, 6500 feet high. 

Aigun (I-gun'), a town of China, in Man¬ 
churia, on the Amur, with a good trade. 
Pop. 15,000. 

Ai'kin, John, M.D., an English miscel¬ 
laneous writer, born 1747, died 1822. He 
practised as physician at Chester, Warring¬ 
ton, and London; turned his attention to 
literature and published various works of a 
miscellaneous description, some in conjunc¬ 
tion with his sister Mrs. Barbauld, includ¬ 
ing the popular Evenings at Home (1792— 
95), written with the view of popularizing 
scientific subjects. His General Biographi¬ 
cal Dictionary was begun in 1799 and fin¬ 
ished in 1815. He was editor of the Monthly 
Magazine from 1796 till 1806. 

Ai'kin, Lucy, daughter of the preceding, 
was born in 1781, and died 1864. In 1810 
she published Poetical Epistles on Women, 
which was followed by a number of books 
for the young. In 1818 appeared her Me¬ 
moirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, 
a very popular work. She afterwards pro¬ 
duced similar works on the reigns of James 
I. (1822) and Charles I. (1833), and a Life 
of Addison (1843). In 1824 she had pub¬ 
lished the literary remains and biography of 
her father. She carried on an interesting 
correspondence with Dr. Channing, which 
has been published. 

VOL. i. 


Aikman, William, an eminent Scottish 
portrait-painter : born in Forfarshire in 1682, 
died in 1731. He studied at Edinburgh 
and in Italy, visited Turkey, and spent the 
later portion of his life in London, where 
he enjoyed the friendship of most of the 
distinguished men of Queen Anne’s 
time. 

Ailan'to, Ailanthus, a tree, genus Allan- 
tus, nat. ord. Simarubacese. The A. glan- 
dulosa, a large and handsome tree, with 
pinnate leaves one or two feet long, is a 
native of China, but has been introduced 
into Europe and North America, where it 
is in favour for its elegant foliage. A 
species of silk-worm, the ailanthus silkworm 
(Saturnia cynthia), feeds on its leaves, and 
the material produced, though wanting the 
fineness and gloss of mulberry silk, is pro¬ 
duced at less cost, and is more durable. 
The wood is hard, heavy, glossy, and sus¬ 
ceptible of a fine polish. 

Ail'red (contracted form of Ethelred), a 
religious and historical writer, supposed to 
have been born in 1097, but whether in 
Scotland or in England is not known, died 
1166; abbot of Rievaulx, in the north rid¬ 
ing of Yorkshire. Wrote lives of Edward 
the Confessor and St. Margaret, Queen of 
Scotland, Genealogy of the Kings of Eng¬ 
land, the Battle of the Standard, &c. 

Ailsa Craig, a rocky islet in the Firth of 
Clyde, 10 miles from the coast of Ayr, of a 
conical form, 1097 feet high, and about 2 miles 
in circumference, precipitous on all sides 
except the north-east, where alone it is ac¬ 
cessible, frequented by innumerable sea- 
fowl, including solan-geese, and covered with 
grass. On it is a lighthouse. 

Ailu'rus. See Panda. 

Aimard (a-mar), Gustave, French nove¬ 
list ; born 1818, died 1883. He lived for ten 
years among the Indians of North America, 
and wrote a number of stories dealing with 
Indian life, which have been popular in 
English translations. 

Ain (an), a south-eastern frontier depart¬ 
ment of France, mountainous in the east 
(ridges of the Jura), flat or undulating in 
the west, divided into two nearly equal 
parts by the river Ain, a tributary of the 
Rhone; area, 2239 square miles. Capital, 
Bourg. Pop. 364,408. 

Ainmiller (In'mil-er), Max Emanuel, a 
German artist who may be regarded as the 
restorer of the art of glass-painting; born 
1807, died 1870. As inspector of the state 
institute of glass-painting at Munich he 


65 



Aiisros 


AIR-CELLS. 


raised this art to a high degree of perfection 
by the new or improved processes introduced 
by him. Under his supervision this estab¬ 
lishment (which latterly became his own) 
produced a vast number of painted windows 
for ecclesiastical and other buildings, among 
the principal being a series of forty win¬ 
dows, containing 100 historical and scrip¬ 
tural pictures in Glasgow Cathedral. His 
son Heinrich, born 1837, has followed in his 
father’s footsteps. 

Ainos (I'noz; that is, men\the native name 
of an uncivilized race of people inhabiting the 
Japanese island of Yesso, as also Saghalien, 
and the Kurile Islands, and believed to be 
the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan. They 
do not average over 5 feet in height, but 
are strong and active. They have matted 
beards 5 or 6 inches in length, and black 
hair which they allow to grow till it falls 
over their shoulders. Their complexion is 
dark brown, approaching to black. They 
worship the sun and moon, and pay rever¬ 
ence to the bear. They support themselves 
by hunting and fishing. 

Ainsworth, Henry, a Puritan divine and 
scholar; born 1571, died 1622. He passed 
great part of his life in Amsterdam, being 
from 1610 pastor of a ‘Brownist’ church 
there (the Brownists being forerunners of 
the Independents). He was a voluminous 
writer, a controversialist and commentator, 
and a thorough Hebrew scholar. 

Ainsworth, Robert, born in Lancashire, 
1660, acquired a competence from keeping 
a private school in or near London, and 
died there in 1743. Among other learned 
works he compiled the well-known Latin 
and English Dictionary, first published in 
1736, which passed through many editions, 
but is now entirely superseded. 

Ainsworth, William Francis, an Eng¬ 
lish physician, geologist, and traveller; born 
1807. He was surgeon and geologist to the 
Euphrates expedition under Col. Chesney, 
and has published Researches in Assyria, 
Babylonia, and Chaldasa (1838), Travels in 
Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Armenia 
(1842), Travels in the Track of the Ten 
Thousand Greeks (1844), &c. 

Ainsworth, William Harrison, an Eng¬ 
lish novelist; born 1805, died 1882. He was 
the son of a Manchester solicitor and in¬ 
tended for the profession of law, but de¬ 
voted himself to literature. He wrote 
Rookwood (1834), Jack Sheppard (1839), 
and about forty other novels, including Guy 
Fawkes, Tower of London, Windsor Castle, 


Lancashire Witches, Flitch of Bacon, <fce., 
none of them likely to live long. 

Ain-Tab (a-in-tab'), a town of Northern 
Syria, 60 miles north of Aleppo; with manu¬ 
factures of cottons, woollens, leather, &c., 
and an extensive trade. There is here an 
American Protestant mission. Pop. 20,000. 

Air, the gaseous substance of which our 
atmosphere consists, being a mechanical 
mixture of 79T9 per cent by measure of 
nitrogen and 20'81 percent of oxygen. The 
latter is absolutely essential to animal life, 
while the purpose chiefly served by the 
nitrogen appears to be to dilute the oxygen. 
Oxygen is more soluble in water than nitro¬ 
gen, and hence the air dissolved in water 
contains about 10 per cent more oxygen 
than atmospheric air. The oxygen there¬ 
fore available for those animals which 
breathe by gills is somewhat less diluted 
with nitrogen, but it is very much diluted 
with water. For the various properties and 
phenomena connected with air see such 
articles as Atmosphere, Aeronautics, Air- 
pump, Barometer, Combustion, Respiration, 
&c. 

Air, in music (in Italian, aria), a continu¬ 
ous melody, in which some lyric subject or 
passion is expressed. The lyric melody of 
a single voice, accompanied by instruments, 
is its proper form of composition. Thus we 
find it in the higher order of musical works; 
as in cantatas, oratorios, operas, and also 
independently in concertos.— Air is also the 
name often given to the upper or most pro¬ 
minent part in a concerted piece, and is 
thus equivalent to treble, soprano, &c. 

Air, or Asben. See Asben. 

Aira. See Hair-grass. 

Air Beds and Cushions, often used by 
the sick and invalids, are composed of india- 
rubber or of cloth made air-tight by a solu¬ 
tion of india-rubber, and when required for 
use filled with air, which thus supplies the 
place of the usual stuffing materials. They 
tend to prevent bed sores from continuous 
lying in one position. They are also cheap 
and easily transported, as the bed or cushion, 
when not in use, can be packed in small 
compass, to be again inflated with air when 
wanted. 

Air-bladder. See Swimming-bladder. 

Air-cells, cavities in the cellular tissue of 
the stems and leaves of plants which con¬ 
tain air only, the juices of the plants being 
contained in separate vessels. They are 
largest and most numerous in aquatic plants, 
as in the Vallisneria spiralis and the Yic- 

66 



AIRD-AIR-PUMP. 


toria regia, the gigantic leaves of which 
latter are buoyed up on the surface of the 
water by their means.—The 
minute cells in the lungs of 
animals are also called air- 
cells. There are also air- 
cells in the bodies of birds. 

They are connected with the 
respiratory system, and are 
situated in the cavity of 
the thorax and abdomen, 
and sometimes extend into Air-cells in Gulf- 
the bones. They are most 
fully developed in birds of 
powerful and rapid flight, such as the alba¬ 
tross. 

Aird, Thomas, a Scottish poet and mis¬ 
cellaneous writer, friend of Professor Wil¬ 
son, De Quincey, and Carlyle, long editor 
of a newspaper in Dumfries; born 1802, died 
1876. He wrote the Devil’s Dream on 
Mount Aksbeck, The Old Bachelor, &c. 

Airdrie, a parliamentary burgh of Scot¬ 
land (Falkirk district), in Lanarkshire, 
11 miles east of Glasgow, in the centre of 
a rich mining district, with a large cotton- 
mill, foundries and machine-shops, breweries, 
&c., and collieries and iron-works in its 
vicinity. Pop. 1891, 15,133. 

Air-engine, an engine in which air heated, 
and so expanded, or compressed air is used 
as the motive power. A great many engines 
of the former kind have been invented, some 
of which have been found to work pretty 
well where no great power is required. 
They may be said to be essentially similar 
in construction to the steam-engine, though 
of course the expansibility of air by heat is 
small compared with the expansion that 
takes place when water is converted into 
steam. Engines working by compressed 
air have been found very useful in mining, 
tunnelling, &c., and the compressed air may 
be conveyed to its destination by means of 
pipes. In such cases the waste air serves 
for ventilation and for reducing the oppres¬ 
sive heat. 

Aire-sur-l’Adour (ar-sur-la-dor), a small 
but ancient town of France, department of 
Landes, the see of a bishop. Pop. 3000. 

Aire-sur-la-Lys (ar-sur-la-le), an old for¬ 
tified town of France, department of Pas 
de Calais, 10 miles south-east of St. Omer. 
Pop. 5000. 

Air-gun, an instrument for the projection 
of bullets by means of condensed air, gene¬ 
rally either in the form of an ordinary gun, 
or of a pretty stout walking-stick, and about 

67 



the same length. A quantity of air being 
compressed into the air-chamber by means 
of a condensing syringe, the bullet is put in 
its place in front of this chamber, and is 
propelled by the expansive force of a certain 
quantity of the compressed air, which is 
liberated on pressing the trigger. 

Airolo (a-i-ro'lo), a small town of Switzer¬ 
land, canton Ticino, at the southern end of 
the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the first place 
on this route at which Italian is spoken. 
Pop. 3678. 

Air-plants, or Epiphytes, are plants that 
grow upon other plants or trees, apparently 
without receiving any nutriment otherwise 
than from the air. The name is restricted 
to flowering plants (mosses or lichens being 
excluded) and is suitably applied to many 
species of orchids. The conditions necessary 
to the growth of such plants are excessive 
heat and moisture, and hence their chief 
localities are the damp and shady tropical 
forests of Africa, Asia, and America. They 
are particularly abundant in Java and tropi¬ 
cal America. 

Air-pump, an apparatus by means of 
which air or other gas may be removed from 
an inclosed space; or for compressing air 
within an inclosed space. An ordinary 
suction-pump for water is on the same prin¬ 
ciple as the air-pump; indeed, before water 
reaches the top of the pipe the air has been 
pumped out by the same machinery which 
pumps the water. An ordinary suction- 
pump consists essentially of a cylinder or 
barrel, having a valve opening from the 
pipe through which water is to rise and a 
valve opening into the outlet pipe, and a 
piston fitted to work in the cylinder (the 
outlet valve may be in the piston). (See 
Pump.) The arrangement of parts in an 
air-pump is quite similar. The barrel of an 
air-pump fills with the air which expands 
from the receiver (that is, the vessel from 
which the air is being pumped), and conse¬ 
quently the quantity of air expelled at each* 
stroke is less as the exhaustion proceeds, the 
air getting more and more rarefied. Sup¬ 
pose that the receiver (so called because it 
receives objects to be experimented on) is 
exactly as large as the barrel; by the first 
stroke there is just half the air removed, by 
the second there is one-fourth, by the third 
there is an eighth, and so on. Suppose the 
barrel is J of the receiver as to volume. On 
raising the piston the air which filled the 
receiver now fills both barrel and receiver, 
so that | is removed at the first stroke, \ of 



AIR-PUMP-AIRY. 


the remaining f is removed at the second 
stroke—that is, and £ of ^ at the third 
stroke, and so on. Fig. 1 represents the essen¬ 
tial parts of a good air-pump in section. E is 
the receiver, F is a mercurial pressure-gauge, 
which indicates the extent of exhaustion; 



r is a cock by means of which air may be 
readmitted to the receiver or by means of 
which the receiver may be shut off from the 
pump-barrel, s' is the inlet valve of the 
barrel; and, inasmuch as the tension of the 
air in the receiver after some strokes would 



not be sufficient to lift a valve, this valve is 
opened by means of the rod which passes 
up through the piston. The outlet valve s 
is kept down by a light spiral spring; it 
opens when, on the space diminishing in 
the barrel by the descent of the piston, the 
contained air has a sufficient pressure. Fig. 2 
shows asimilar pump in perspective (a double- 
barrel led pump); P is the plate on which the 


receiver is placed, h the pressure-gauge, R 
the readmission cock. The pressure-gauge 
is merely a siphon barometer inclosed in a 
bell-shaped vessel of glass communicating 
with the receiver. This barometer consists 
of a bent tube containing mercury, one end 
being closed, the other open. As the air is 
exhausted the smaller is the difference be¬ 
tween the height of the mercury in the two 
branches of the tube, and a complete vacuum 
would be indicated if the mercury stood at 
the same level in both.—Air-pumps for 
compressing air are constructed on the same 
principle but act the reverse way.—Many 
interesting experiments may be made with 
the air-pump. If an animal is placed beneath 
the receiver, and the air exhausted, it dies 
almost immediately; a lighted candle under 
the exhausted receiver immediately goes out. 
Air is thus shown to be necessary to animal 
life and to combustion. A bell, suspended 
from a silken thread beneath the exhausted 
receiver, on being struck cannot be heard. 
If the bell be in one receiver from which 
the air is not exhausted, but which is within 
an exhausted receiver, it still cannot be 
heard. Air is therefore necessary to the 
production and to the transmission of sound. 
A shrivelled apple placed beneath an ex¬ 
hausted receiver becomes as plump as if 
quite fresh, being thus shown to be full of 
elastic air. The air-pump was invented by 
Otto von Guericke, burgomaster of Magde¬ 
burg, about the year 1654. 

Airy, Sir George Biddell, a distin¬ 
guished English astronomer, was born at 
Alnwick, June 27, 1801, and educated at 
Hereford, Colchester, and Trinity College, 
Cambridge, where he was senior wrangler 
in 1823. At Cambridge he was Lucasian 
professor of mathematics, and subsequently 
Plumian professor of astronomy and experi¬ 
mental philosophy, in the latter capacity 
having charge of the observatory. In 1835 
he was appointed astronomer-royal, and as 
such his superintendence of the observatory 
at Greenwich was able and successful. He 
resigned this post with a pension in 1881. 
He has written largely and made numerous 
valuable investigations on subj ects connected 
with astronomy, physics, and mathematics; 
and has received many honours from aca¬ 
demic and learned bodies. Among separate 
works published by him may be mentioned 
Popular Astronomy, On Sound and Atmo¬ 
spheric Vibrations, A Treatise on Magnet¬ 
ism, On the Undulatory Theory of Optics, 
On Gravitation. Died Jan. 2, 1892. 

68 



























































AISLE 


AJACCIO. 


Aisle (il; from L. ala , a wing), in archi¬ 
tecture, one of the lateral divisions of a 
church in the direction of its length, sepa¬ 
rated from the central portion or nave by 
piers or pillars. There may be one aisle 
or more on each side of the nave. The 
cathedrals at Antwerp and Paris have seven 
aisles in all. The nave is sometimes called 
the central aisle. See Cathedral. 

Aisne (an), a north-eastern frontier de¬ 
partment of France; area, 2838 sq. miles. 
It is an undulating, well-cultivated, and 
well-wooded region, chiefly watered by the 
Oise in the north, its tributary the Aisne in 
the centre, and the Marne in the south. It 
contains the important towns of St. Quen¬ 
tin, Laon (the capital), Soissons, and Chateau 
Thierry. Pop. 555,925. 

Aiva'li, or Kidonia, a seaport of Asiatic 
Turkey, on the Gulf of Adramyti, 66 miles 
north by west of Smyrna, carrying on an 
extensive commerce in olive-oil, soap, cotton, 
&c. Pop. 80,000. 

Aix (aks), a town of Southern France, 
department Bouches-du-Rhone, on the river 
Arc, the seat of an archbishop. It is well 
built, has an old cathedral and other inter¬ 
esting buildings, high - class educational 
institutions, library (over 100,000 vols.), 
museum, &c.; manufactures of cotton, 
woollens, oil, soap, hats, flour, &c.; warm 
springs, now less visited than formerly. 
Aix was founded in 123 B.c. by the Roman 
consul Caius Sextius Calvinus, and from its 
mineral springs was called Aquce Sextice 
(Sextian Waters). Between this town and 
Arles Marius gained his great victory over 
the Teutons, 102 B.c. In the middle ages 
the counts of Provence held their court 
here, to which the troubadours used to re¬ 
sort. Pop. 19,686. 

Aix, or Aix-les-Bains (uks-la-ban), a 
finely situated village of France, department 
of Savoie, 8 miles north of Chamber}', on 
the side of a fertile valley, with much-fre¬ 
quented hot springs known to the Romans 
by the name of Aquce Gratiance, and with 
ruins of a Roman triumphal arch, and of a 
temple of Diana. Pop. 2635. 

Aix-la-Chapelle (aks-la-sha-pel; Ger. 
A achen), a city of Rhenish Prussia, 38 miles 
west by south of Cologne, pleasantly situated 
in a fine vale watered by the Wurm, for¬ 
merly surrounded by ramparts, now con¬ 
verted into pleasant promenades. It is 
well built, and though an ancient town 
has now quite a modern appearance. The 
most important building is the cathedral, 

69 


the oldest portion of which, often called the 
nave, was erected in the time of Charles 
the Great (Charlemagne) as the palace 
chapel about 796. It is in the Byzantine 
style, and consists of an octagon, surrounded 
by a sixteen-sided gallery and surmounted 
by a cupola, in the middle being the tomb 
of Charlemagne. The adjoining Gothic 
choir, begun in 1353 and finished in 1413, 
forms the other chief division of the cathe¬ 
dral ; it is lofty and of great elegance, 
and has fine painted windows. Aix-la- 
Chapelle, with the adjoining Burtscheid, 
which may be considered a suburb, is a 
place of great commerce and manufactur¬ 
ing industry, the chief productions being 
woollen yarns and cloths, needles, machinery, 
cards (for the woollen manufacture), rail¬ 
way and other carriages, cigars, chemicals, 
silk goods, hosiery, glass, soap, &c. A con¬ 
siderable portion of its importance and 
prosperity arises from the influx of visitors 
to its springs and baths, there being a num¬ 
ber of warm sulphur springs here, and 
several chalybeate springs, with ample 
accommodation for strangers. — Aix - la- 
Chapelle was known to the Romans as 
Aquisgranum. It was the favourite resi¬ 
dence of Charles the Great, who made it 
the capital of all his dominions north of the 
Alps, and who died here in 814. During 
the middle ages it was a free imperial city 
and very flourishing. Thirty-seven German 
emperors and eleven empresses have been 
ci’owned in it, and the imperial insignia 
were preserved here till 1795, when they 
were carried to Vienna. Pop. 95,725.— 
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, a congress held 
in 1818, by which the army of the allies in 
France was withdrawn after France had 
paid the contribution imposed at the peace 
of 1815, and independence restored to 
France.—A treaty of peace concluded at 
this city, May 2, 1668, as a result of the 
Triple Alliance, put an end to the war 
carried on against Spain by Louis XIV. in 
1667, after the death of his father-in-law, 
Philip IV., in support of his claims to a 
great part of the Spanish Netherlands, 
which be urged in the name of his queen, 
the infanta Maria Theresa. By this France 
obtained Lille, Charleroi, Douai, Tournai, 
Oudenarde, &c. The second peace of Aix- 
la-Chapelle, October 18, 1748, terminated 
the Austrian war of succession. 

Ajaccio (a-yach'o), the capital of Corsica, 
on the south-west coast of the island, on a 
tongue of land projecting into the Gulf of 


AJANTA- 

Ajaccio, the birthplace of Napoleon and the 
seat of a bishop, with coral and sardine fish¬ 
eries, and a considerable trade. Pop. 15,351. 

Ajan'ta, a village and ra\ine of India, in 
the Nizam’s Dominions, 24 miles north of 
Assaye. The ravine, 4 miles N.w. of the 
village, is celebrated for its cave temples, 
twenty-nine in number, excavated out of a 
wall of almost perpendicular rock about 250 
feet high. They are all richly ornamented 


- AKBAE. 

with sculpture, and covered with highly- 
finished paintings. 

A'jax (Ur. Aias), the name of two 
Grecian chiefs who fought against Troy, the 
one being son of Ofleus, the other son of 
Telamon. The latter was from Salamis, 
and sailed with twelve ships to Troy, where 
he is represented by Homer as the boldest 
and handsomest of the Greeks, after Achilles. 
On the death of Achilles, when his arms, 



Mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar at Secundra. 


which Ajax claimed, were awarded to Ulys¬ 
ses, he became insane and killed himself. This 
is the subject of Sophocles’s tragedy Ajax. 

Ajmeer', Ajmir, or Ajmer, a British com- 
missionership in India, Rajputana, divided 
into the two districts of Ajmeer and Mair- 
wara; area, 2711 sq. miles. The surface is 
hilly in the north and west, where there is a 
branch of the Aravali range, but level in 
the south and east. The soil is partly 
fertile, but there occur large barren sandy 
plains. Pop. 460,722.— Ajmeer, the capi¬ 
tal, an ancient city, a favourite residence 
of the Mogul emperors, is 279 miles s.w. of 
Delhi, at the foot of Taragarh Hill (2853 
feet), on which is a fort. It is surrounded 
by a wall, and possesses a government col¬ 
lege, as also Mayo College for Eajpoot 
nobles, a Scottish mission, a mosque that 
forms one of the finest specimens of early 
Mohammedan architecture extant, and an 
old palace of Akbar, now the treasury; trade 
in cotton, sugar, salt, &c. Pop. 34,763. 


Ajowan' (Ptychotis Ajowan), an umbelli¬ 
ferous plant cultivated in India, Persia, and 
Egypt, the seeds of which are used in 
cookery and in medicine, having carminative 
properties. 

Aju'ga, a genus of plants. See Bugle. 

Ajutage, a short tube of a tapering shape 
fitting into the side of a reservoir to regulate 
the discharge of the water. Also, the nozzle 
of a tube for regulating the discharge of 
water to form a jet d’eau. 

Akabah', Gulf of, an arm of the Red 
Sea, on the east side of the Peninsiila of 
Sinai, which separates it from the Gulf of 
Suez; nearly 100 miles long. The village 
of Akabah, at the northern extremity of 
the gulf, is supposed to be the Ezion-gcbcr 
of the Old Testament. 

Akaroid Resin, a resin obtained from 
some of the grass-trees of Australia, used 
in varnishes. 

Ak'bar (that is, ‘very great’), a Mogul 
emperor, the greatest Asiatic prince of 

70 



































































AKEE-AKKAS. 


modern times. He was born at Amerkote, 
in Sind, in 1542, succeeded his father, 
Humayun, at the age of thirteen, and gov¬ 
erned first under the guardianship of his 
minister, Beyram, but took the chief power 
into his own hands in 1560. He fought 
with distinguished valour against his foreign 
foes and rebellious subjects, conquering all 
his enemies, and extending the limits of the 
empire further than they had ever been 
before, although on his accession they em¬ 
braced only a small part of the former 
Mogul Empire. His government was re¬ 
markable for its mildness and tolerance to¬ 
wards all sects; he was indefatigable in his 
attention to the internal administration of 
his empire, and instituted inquiries into the 
population, character, and productions of 
each province. The result of his statistical 
labours, as well as a history of his reign, 
were collected by his minister, Abul Fazl, 
in a work called Akbar-Nameh (Book of 
Akbar), the third part of which, entitled 
Ayini-Akbari (Institutes of Akbar), was 
published in an English translation at Cal¬ 
cutta (1783-86, three vols.), and reprinted 
in London. He died in 1605. His mauso¬ 
leum at Secundra, near Agra, is a fine ex¬ 
ample of Mohammedan architecture. 

Akee' (Blighia sapida ), a tree of the 
nat. order Sapindaceae, much esteemed for 
its fruit. The leaves are somewhat similar 
to those of the ash; the flowers are small 
and white, and produced in branched spikes. 
The fruit is lobed and ribbed, of a dull 
orange colour, and contains several large 
black seeds, embedded in a succulent and 
slightly bitter arillus of a pale straw colour, 
which is eaten when cooked. The akee is a 
native of Guinea, from whence it was carried 
to the West Indies by Captain Bligh in 1793. 

A Kempis, Thomas. See Thomas d 
Kempis. 

Aken (a/ken), a Prussian town, province 
of Saxony, on the left bank of the Elbe, 
with manufactures of tobacco, cloth, beet¬ 
root sugar, leather, &c. Pop. 5284. 

A'kenside, Mark, a poet and physician, 
born in 1721, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; died 
in London in 1770. He was the son of a 
butcher, and was sent to the University of 
Edinburgh to qualify himself for the Pres¬ 
byterian ministry, but chose the study of 
medicine instead. After three years’ resi¬ 
dence at Edinburgh he went to Leyden, and 
in 1744 became Doctor of Physic. In the 
same year he published the Pleasures of 
Imagination, which he is said to have 

71 


written in Edinburgh. Having settled in 
London, he became a fellow of the Royal 
Society and was admitted into the College 
of Physicians. In 1759 he was appointed 
first assistant and afterwards head physi¬ 
cian to St. Thomas’s Hospital. Latterly he 
wrote little poetry, but published several 
medical essays and observations. The place 
of Akenside as a poet is not very high, 
though his somewhat cumbrous and cloudy 
Pleasures of Imagination was once con¬ 
sidered one of the most pleasing didactic 
poems in our language. 

Akermann', a seaport of Southern Russia, 
in Bessarabia, near the mouth of the Dnies¬ 
ter, with a good port. The vicinity pro¬ 
duces quantities of salt and also fine grapes, 
from which excellent wine is made. a. 
treaty was signed here, Oct. 6, 1826, be¬ 
tween Russia and the Poi’te, by which 
Moldavia, Walachia, and Servia were re¬ 
leased from all but nominal dependence on 
Turkey. Pop. 29,609. 

Akhalzik, Achalzik (a-Aal'tsik), a town 
of Russia in Asia, in the Trans-Caucasian 
government of Tiflis, 97 miles west of Tiflis, 
with a citadel. It was taken by the Rus¬ 
sians in 1828. Pop. 15,977. 

Ak-Hissar (‘White Castle’), a town in 
Asiatic Turkey, 46 miles n.e. of Smyrna, 
occupying the site of the ancient Thyatira, 
relics of which city are here abundant. 
Here the Emperor Yalens defeated the 
usurper Procopius in 366, and Murad de¬ 
feated the Prince of Aidin in 1425. Pop. 
10 , 000 . 

Aklityrka (a/t-tir'ka), a cathedral town of 
southern Russia, gov. Kharkov, with a good 
trade and some manufactures. Pop. 23,892. 

Akjermann (ak-yer-man'). Same a* 
A Hermann. 

Akkas, a 
dwarfish race 
of Central Af¬ 
rica, dwelling 
in scattered 
settlements to 
the north-west 
of Lake Albert 
Nyanza, about 
lat. 3° N., Ion. 

29° E. Their 
height aver¬ 
ages about 4jj 
feet; they are 
of a brownish 
or coffee colour; head large, jaws projecting 
(or prognathous), ears large, hands small. 



Akka—African Tribe. 



AKMOLLINSK 

They are timid and suspicious, and live al¬ 
most entirely by the chase, being exceed¬ 
ingly skilful with the bow and arrow. 

Akmollinsk', a Russian province in Cen¬ 
tral Asia, largely consisting of steppes and 
wastes; the rivers are the Ishim and Sari- 
Su; and it contains the larger part of Lake 
Balkash. Area of 210,000 sq. m. Pop. 
463,347.— Akmollinsk, the capital, is a 
place of some importance for its caravan 
trade. Pop. 3130. 

Ako'la, a town of India, in Berar, the 
residence of the commissioner of Berar, on 
the river Morna, 150 miles w. by s. of 
Nagpur; with walls and a fort, and some 
trade in cotton. Pop. 16,608. 

Akron, a town of the United States, in 
Ohio, 100 miles N.E. of Columbus, on an 
elevated site. Being furnished with ample 
water-power by the Little Cuyahoga it 
possesses large flour-mills, woollen factories, 
manufactures of iron goods, &c. In the 
vicinity extensive beds of mineral paint 
are worked. Pop. in 1890, 27,601. 

Aksu' (‘white water’), a town of Eastern 
or Chinese Turkestan, 300 miles from Kash¬ 
gar, in the valley of the Aksu. It is an im¬ 
portant centre of trade between Russia, 
China, and Tartary, and has manufactures 
of cotton cloth, leather, and metal goods. 
Formerly the residence of the kings of 
Kashgar and Yarkand. Pop. 30,000. 

Akyab', a seaport of Lower Burmah, 
capital of the province of Arracan, at the 
mouth of the river Kuladan or Akyab, of 
recent upgrowth, well built, possessing a 
good harbour, and carrying on an important 
trade, its chief exports being rice and petro¬ 
leum. Pop. 33,998. 

Alabama (al-a-ba'ma), one of the United 
States, bounded by Tennessee, Georgia, 
Florida,the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi; 
area 52,250 square miles. The southern part, 
bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and Flo¬ 
rida, is low and level, and wooded largely 
with pine, hence known as the ‘pine-woods 
region;’ the middle is hilly, with some tracts 
of level sand or prairies; the north is broken 
and mountainous. The state is intersected 
by the rivers Alabama, Tombigbee, Mobile, 
Coosa, Tallapoosa, Tennessee, &c., some of 
them navigable for several hundred miles. 
The soil is various, being in some places, 
particularly in the south, sandy and barren, 
but in most parts is fertile, especially in the 
river valleys and in the centre, where there 
is a very fertile tract known as the ‘cotton 
belt.’ The climate in general is warm, and 


— ALABAMA. 

in the low-lying lands skirting the rivers is 
rather unhealthy. In the more elevated 
parts it is healthy and agreeable, the winters 
being mild and the summers tempered by 
breezes from the Gulf of Mexico. The 
staple production is cotton, especially in the 
middle and south, where rice and sugar are 
also grown; in the north the cereals (above 
all maize) are the principal crops. Alabama 
possesses extensive beds of iron ore and 
coal, with marble, granite, and other min¬ 
erals; and coal and iron mining, and the 
smelting and working of iron, receive con¬ 
siderable attention. The manufacture of 
cotton goods is extensively carried on. In 
the production of pig-iron, Alabama now 
ranks as third State in the Union. The 
State sends eight representatives to Con¬ 
gress. Its principal towns are Montgomery, 
the seat of government, and Mobile, the 
chief port. There is a state university at 
Tuscaloosa, a university connected with the 
Methodist Episcopal body, several state 
normal colleges, besides professional schools, 
&c., in the principal towns. Alabama be¬ 
came a State in 1819. Pop. in 1890, 1,513,- 
017, of whom 681,431 were coloured. 

Alabama, a river of the United States, in 
the state of Alabama, formed by the junction 
of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa. After 
a course of 300 miles it joins the Tombigbee 
and assumes the name of the Mobile. 

Alabama, The, a ship built at Birkenhead 
to act as a privateer in the service of the 
Confederate States of North America during 
the civil war begun in 1861. She was a 
wooden screw steamer with two engines of 
350 horse-power each, 1040 tons burden, 
and carried eight 32-pounders. Before she 
was launched her destination was made 
known to the British government, but owing 
to some legal formalities the orders given 
for her detention did not reach Liverpool 
till the day after she had left that port 
(29th July, 1862). She received her arma¬ 
ment and stores at the Azores, and entered 
on her destructive career, capturing and 
burning merchant vessels, till she was sunk 
in a fight with the Federal war steamer 
Kcarsarge, off Cherbourg, 19th June, 1864. 
As early as the winter of 1862 the United 
States government declared that they held 
themselves entitled at a suitable period to 
demand full compensation from Britain for 
the damages inflicted on American property 
by the Alabama and several other cruisers 
that had been built, supplied, or recruited 
in British ports or waters. After a long 



ALANI. 


ALABASTER 


series of negotiations it was agreed to sub¬ 
mit the final settlement of the question to 
a court of arbitration, consisting of repre¬ 
sentatives of Britain, and the United States, 
and of three other members, appointed by 
the King of Italy, the President of Switzer¬ 
land, and the Emperor of Brazil. This court 
met at Geneva, 17th December, 1871, and 
a claim for indirect damages to American 
commerce having been abandoned by the 
United States government, the decree was 
given in September, 1872, that Britain was 
liable to the United States in damages to 
the amount of 15,500,000 dollars (about 
£3,229,200). After all awards were made 
to private claimants about 8,000,000 dollars 
still remain unclaimed. 

Alabas'ter, a name applied to a granular 
variety of gypsum or hydrated sulphate of 
lime. It was much used by the ancients 
for the manufacture of ointment and per¬ 
fume boxes, vases, and the like. It has a 
fine granular texture, is usually of a pure 
white colour, and is so soft that it can be 
scratched with the nail. It is found in 
many parts of Europe; in great abundance 
and of peculiarly excellent quality in Tus¬ 
cany. From the finer and more compact 
kinds vases,clock-stands, statuettes,and other 
ornamental articles are made, and from infe¬ 
rior kinds the cement known as plaster of 
Paris. A variety of carbonate of lime, 
closely resembling alabaster in appearance, 
is used for similar purposes under the name 
of Oriental alabaster. It is usually stalag- 
mitic or stalactitic in origin and is often of 
a yellowish colour. It may be distinguished 
from true alabaster by being too hard to be 
scratched with the nail. 

Alac'taga (Alactdga, jaculus), a rodent 
mammal, closely allied to the jerboa, but 
somewhat larger in size, with a still longer 
tail. Its range extends from the Crimea 
and the steppes of the Don across Central 
Asia to the Chinese frontier. 

Alago'as, a maritime province of Brazil; 
area, 11,640 sq. miles; pop. about 400,000.— 
Alagoas, the former capital of the province, 
is situated on the south side of an arm of 
the sea, about 20 miles distant from Maceio, 
to which the seat of government was trans¬ 
ferred in 1839. Pop. about 4000. 

Alais (a-la), a town of Southern France, 
department of Gard, 87 miles N.w. of Mar¬ 
seilles, with coal, iron, and lead mines, 
which are actively worked, and chalybeate 
springs, which have many visitors during 
the autumn months. Pop. 16,945, 

73 


Alajuela (a-la-Aq-a'la), a town of Cen¬ 
tral America, capital of the state of Costa 
Rica. Pop. 12,000. 

Ala-Kul, a lake in Russian Central Asia, 
near the borders of Mongolia, in lat. 46° N. 
Ion. 81° 40' E. ; area, 660 sq. m. 

Alamanni. See Alemanni. 

Alaman'ni, Luigi, an Italian poet, of noble 
family, born at Florence in 1495. Suspected 
of conspiring against the life of Cardinal 
Giulio Medici, who then governed Florence 
in the name of Pope Leo X., he fled to 
Venice, and when the cardinal ascended 
the papal chair under the name of Clement 
VII. he took refuge iu France, where he 
henceforth lived, being employed by Francis 
I. and Henry II. in several important nego¬ 
tiations. He died in 1556. 

Alameda, Alameda county, Cal., a fa¬ 
vorite suburban residence for San Fran¬ 
cisco business men. It is situated on the 
Bay of San Francisco about 8 miles from the 
city, with which it is connected by a steam 
ferry. It is celebrated for its orchards and 
gardens. Pop. in 1890, 11,165. 

Al amo, a fort in Bexar county, Texas, 
U.S., celebrated for the resistance its occu¬ 
pants (140 Texans) made to a Mexican force 
of 4000 from 23d February to 6th March, 
1836. At the latter date only six Texans 
remained alive, and on their surrendering 
they were slaughtered by the Mexicans. 

Al'amos, a town of Mexico, state of 
Sonora, well built, the capital of a mining 
district. Pop. 12,000. 

Aland (o'land) Islands, a numerous group 
of islands and islets, about eighty of which 
are inhabited, belonging to Russia, situated 
in the Baltic Sea, near the mouth of the Gulf 
of Finland; area, 468 square miles. The prin¬ 
cipal island, Aland, distant about 30 miles 
from the Swedish coast, is 18 miles long and 
about 14 broad. It has a harbour capable of 
containing the whole Russian fleet. The for¬ 
tress of Bomarsund, here situated, was de¬ 
stroyed by an Anglo-Frenchforce in August, 
1854. The inhabitants, who are of Swedish 
extraction, employ themselves mostly in 
fishing. The islands w r ere ceded by Sweden 
to Russia in 1809. Pop. 18,000. 

Alani, or Alans, one of the warlike 
tribes which migrated from Asia west¬ 
ward at the time of the decline of the 
Roman empire. They are first met w ith in 
the region of the Caucasus, where Pompey 
fought with them. From this centre they 
spread over the south of modern Russia to 
the confines of the Roman empire. About 



ALARCON Y MENDOZA-ALASKA. 


the middle of the fifth century they joined 
the Vandals, among whom they become lost 
to history. 

Alarcon' Y Mendo'za, Don Juan Ruiz 
de, one of the most distinguished dramatic 
poets of Spain, born in Mexico about the 
beginning of the seventeenth century. He 
came to Europe about 1622, and in 1628 
he published a volume containing eight 
comedies, and in 1634 another containing 
twelve. One of them, called La Verdad 
Sospechosa (The Truth Suspected), fur¬ 
nished Corneille with the groundwork and 
greater part of the substance of his Men- 
teur. His Tejador de Segovia (Weaver of 
Segovia) and Las Paredes Oyen (Walls have 
Ears) are still performed on the Spanish 
stage. He died in 1639. 

Alaric I., King of the Visigoths, was born 
about the middle of the fourth century, and 
is first mentioned in history in a.d. 394,when 
Theodosius the Great gave him the com¬ 
mand of his Gothic auxiliaries. The dissen¬ 
sions between Arcadius and Honorius, the 
sons of Theodosius, inspired Alaric with the 
intention of attacking the Roman empire. 
In 396 he ravaged Greece, from which he 
was driven by the Roman general Stilicho, 
but made a masterly retreat to Illyria, of 
which Arcadius, frightened at his successes, 
appointed him governor. In 400 he invaded 
Italy, but was defeated by Stilicho at Pol- 
lentia (403), and induced to transfer his ser¬ 
vices from Arcadius to Honorius on condi¬ 
tion of receiving 4000 lbs. of gold. Honorius 
having failed to fulfil this condition, Alaric 
made a second invasion of Italy, during 
which he besieged Rome thrice. The first 
time (408) the city was saved by paying a 
heavy ransom; the second (409) it capitu¬ 
lated, and Honorius was deposed, but shortly 
afterwards restored. His sanction of a trea¬ 
cherous attack on the forces of Alaric brought 
about the third siege, and the city was taken 
24th August, 410, and sacked for six days, 
Alaric, however, doing everything in his 
power to restrain the violence of his fol¬ 
lowers. He quitted Rome with the inten¬ 
tion of reducing Sicily and Africa, but died 
at Cosenza in 410. 

Al aric II., King of the Visigoths from 
484 to 507 a.d. At the beginning of his 
reign the dominions of the Visigoths were 
at their greatest extent, embracing three- 
fourths of the modern Spain and all Western 
Gaul to the south of the Loire. His un¬ 
warlike character induced Clovis, King of 
the Franks, to invade the kingdom of the 


Visigoths. In a battle near Poictiers (507) 
Alaric w’as slain and his army completely 
defeated. The Breviarium Alaricianum, a 
code of laws derived exclusively from Roman 
sources, was compiled by a body of Roman 
jurists at the command of this King Alaric. 

Alarm, in military language, a signal, 
given by beat of drum, bugle-call, or firing 
of a gun, to apprise a camp or garrison of a 
surprise intended or actually made by the 
enemy. A place, called the alarm-post, is 
generally appointed at which the troops are 
to assemble when an alarm is given .—Alarm 
is also the name given to several contrivan¬ 
ces in which electricity is made use of. as 
a fire-alarm, by which intelligence is at once 
conveyed to the proper quarter when a fire 
breaks out; a burglar-alarm, an arrange¬ 
ment of wires and a battery in a house in¬ 
tended to set a bell or bells ringing should 
a burglar attempt to gain entrance. 

Alarm-clock, one which can be set so as 
to ring loudly at a certain hour to wake 
from sleep or excite attention. 

Ala-Shehr (a-la-shar'; ancient Philadel¬ 
phia), a town in Turkey in Asia, 76 miles 
east of Smyrna, famous as the seat of one of 
the first Christian churches, and still having 
a vast number of interesting remains of an¬ 
tiquity, consisting of fragments of beautiful 
columns, sarcophagi, fountains, &c. It is 
a place of some importance, carrying on a 
thriving trade by caravans, chiefly wdth 
Smyrna. Pop. 15,000. 

Alas ka, a territory belonging to the 
United States, comprising all that portion 
of the north-w r est of North America which 
lies west of the 141st meridian of west Ion-' 
gitude, together with an irregular strip of 
coast land (and the adjacent islands), ex¬ 
tending south to lat. 54° 40' N., and lying 
between the British territories and the Pa¬ 
cific; total area, about 528,000 sq. m. The 
territory is watered by several rivers, the 
principal of which is the Yukon, a river of 
great length. The principal mountains 
(among w r hich are a number of active vol¬ 
canic peaks) are Mounts Wrangell (20,000 
ft.), Fairweatlier, and Crillon. The climate 
of the interior is very severe in winter, but 
in summer the beat is intense; on the Pa¬ 
cific coast it is mild but moist. Alaska pro¬ 
duces excellent timber. Numbers of fur¬ 
bearing animals abound, such as the fur- 
seal, sea-otter, beaver, fox, mink, marten, 
&c.; and the fur trade has long been valu¬ 
able. The coasts and rivers swarm with fish, 
and salmon and cod are caught and ex- 

74 



ALASSIO — 

ported. Gold is now mined in several lo¬ 
calities. Coal is abundant. The aboriginal 
inhabitants consist of Esquimaux and In¬ 
dians. Alaska formerly belonged to Russia, 
but was made over to the United States in 
1867 for a sum of 7,200,000 dollars. The 
seat of government is Sitka, on Baranoff 
Island. Pop. 1890, 30,329, of whom 4419 
are whites. 

Alas'sio, a seaport of North Italy, on the 
Gulf of Genoa, a winter resort of people 
from England. Pop. 5000. 

Alatau (i-la-tou'), the name of three 
considerable mountain ranges of Central 
Asia, on the Russian and Chinese frontiers. 

Alatyr (a-la-tir'), a town in Russia, gov¬ 
ernment Simbirsk, at the confluence of the 
Alatyr with the Sura, with a considerable 
trade. Pop. 8085. 

Alau'da, a genus of insessorial birds, 
which includes the larks. See Lari'. 

A lava, a hilly province in the north of 
Spain, one of the three Basque provinces; 
area, 1207 sq. m.; covered by branches of 
the Pyrenees, the mountains being clothed 
with oak, chestnut, 
and other timber, and 
the valleys yielding 
grain, vegetables, and 
abundance of fruits. 

There are iron and 
copper mines, and 
inexhaustible salt 
springs. Capital, Vit- 
toria. Pop. 93,538. 

Alb (from L. albus , 
white), a clerical vest¬ 
ment worn by priests 
while officiating in 
the more solemn func¬ 
tions of divine ser¬ 
vice. It is a long 
robe of white linen 
reaching to the feet, 
bound round the 
waist by a cincture, and fitting more closely 
to the body than the surplice. 

Alba, the name of several towns in ancient 
Italy, the most celebrated of which was Alba 
Longa, a city of Latium, according to tra¬ 
dition built by Ascanius, the son of ^Eneas, 
300 years before the foundation of Rome, 
at onetime the most powerful city of Latium. 
It ultimately fell under the dominion of 
Rome, when the town was destroyed, it is 
said. In later times its site became covered 
with villas of wealthy Romans. 

Alba (anciently Alba Pompeia ), a town 

75 


■ ALBANIA. 

of Northern Italy, about 30 miles s.E. of 
Turin, is the see of a bishop, has a cathe¬ 
dral, bishop’s palace, church with fresco 
paintings by Perugino, &c. Pop. 6872. 

Alba, Duke of. See Alva. 

Albacete (al-ba-tha'ta), a town in 
Southern Spain, capital of the province of 
the same name, 106 miles N.N.w. of Carta¬ 
gena, with a considerable trade, both direct 
and transit, and manufactures of knives, 
daggers, &c. Pop. 17,694.—The province 
has an area of 6170 sq. m., and a pop. of 
219,058. 

Alba Longa. See Alba. 

Alban, St., the traditionary proto-martyr 
of Britain, who flourished in the third cen¬ 
tury, was, it is said, converted from Pagan¬ 
ism by a confessor whom he had saved from 
his persecutors, and refusing to sacrifice to 
the gods, was executed outside of the city 
of Verulamium (St. Albans) in 285 or 305. 

Albani (al-ba'ne), Francesco, a famous 
Italian painter, born at Bologna in 1578, 
died in 1660. He had as teachers the 
Flemish painter Calvaert and the Caracci. 
Among the best known of his compositions 
are the Sleeping Venus, Diana in the Bath, 
Danae Reclining, Galatea on the Sea, Europa 
on the Bull. 

Alba'nia, an extensive region in the south¬ 
west of Turkey in Europe, stretching along 
the coast of the Adriatic for about 290 miles, 
and having a breadth varying from about 
90 to about 50 miles. The boundary on the 
east is formed by a range of mountains, and 
the country is composed of at least nine 
ridges of hills, of which six are in Lower or 
Southern Albania (ancient Epirus) and the 
remainderin Central and Upperor Northern 
Albania. There are no large rivers, and in 
summer many of the streams are completely 
dry. The Drin or Drino is the largest. 
The most beautiful lake is that of Ochrida, 
20 miles long, 8 broad at the widest part. 
The Lake of Scutari, in Upper Albania, is 
the largest. Among trees Albania has many 
species of oak, the poplar, hazel, plane, chest¬ 
nut, cypress, and laui’el. The vine flourishes, 
together with the orange, almond, fig, mul¬ 
berry, and citron; maize, wheat, and barley 
are cultivated. Its fauna comprises bears, 
wolves, and chamois; sheep, goats, horses, 
asses, and mules are plentiful. The chief 
exports are live stock, wool, hides, timber, 
oil, salt-fish, cheese, and tobacco. The chief 
ports are Prevesa, Avlona, and Durazzo. 
The population, about 1,400,000, consists 
chiefly of Albanians or Arnauts, or, as they 



Alb. 













ALBANO-ALBATROS. 


call themselves, Slcipctars (mountaineers), 
with a certain number of Greeks and Turks. 
The Albanians are distinct in race and lan¬ 
guage from the surrounding peoples. They 
are only half civilized, are divided into a 
number of clans, and bloody feuds are still 
common among them. They belong partly 
to the Greek, partly to the Roman Catholic 
Church, but the great majority are Moham¬ 
medans. Though their country became a 
province of the Turkish dominions in the 



Albanian Peasantry. 


fifteenth century, they still maintain a cer¬ 
tain degree of independence, which the Porte 
has never found it possible to overcome. 

Alba'no, a city and lake in Italy, the 
former about 15 miles south-east of Rome, 
and on the west border of the lake, amid 
beautiful scenery, with remarkable remains 
of ancient structures. Pop. 6493. — The 
lake, situated immediately beneath the 
Alban Hill, is of an oval form, 6 miles in 
circumference, surrounded by steep banks 
of volcanic tufa 300 or 400 feet high, and 
discharges its superfluous waters by an arti¬ 
ficial tunnel at least 2000 years old. 

Albans, St. See St. Albans. 

Al'bany, the original Celtic name pro¬ 
bably at first applied to the whole of Bri¬ 
tain, but latterly restricted to the High¬ 
lands of Scotland. It gave the title of duke 
formerly to a prince of the blood-royal of 
Scotland. The first duke was Robert Stu¬ 
art (1339-1419), second son of Robert II. 


and brother of Robert III. He was virtual 
ruler of the kingdom during the latter years 
of his brother’s reign, and acted as regent 
for his nephew James. I. (kept a prisoner 
in England) till his own death. Another 
nephew, David, Duke of Rothesay, is said 
to have been starved to death in Falkland 
Castle through his influence. His son Mur¬ 
doch, second duke, succeeded him as regent, 
and was put to death by James for malad¬ 
ministration. The third duke was Alexan¬ 
der, second son of James II. and brother of 
James III. A large part of his life was 
passed in France. His son John was the 
fourth who bore the title. He was regent 
of Scotland during the minority of James 
V. (1515-1523). Latterly the title has be¬ 
longed to members of the British royal 
family. 

Al'bany, a city of the United States, 
capital of the state of New York on the 
west bank of the Hudson, 145 miles north 
of New York city, from and to which steam¬ 
boats run daily. The Erie Canal and the 
numerous railway lines centering here from 
all directions greatly contribute to the 
growth and prosperity of the city, which 
carries on an extensive trade. It is a great 
mart for timber, and has foundries, brewer¬ 
ies, tanneries, &c. Albany was settled by 
the Dutch in 1610-14, and the older houses 
are in the Dutch style, with the gable-ends 
to the streets. There is a university, an 
observatory, and a state library with 90,000 
volumes. The principal public edifices are 
the capitol or state-house, the state-hall for 
the public offices, a state arsenal, and numer¬ 
ous religious edifices. Pop. in 1890, 94,923. 

Al'bany, Louisa Maria Caroline, Coun¬ 
tess of, a princess of the Stolberg-Gedern 
family, was born in 1753, and married, in 
1772, the pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, 
after which event she bore the above title. 
To escape from the ill-treatment of her 
husband she retired, in 1780, to the house 
of her brother-in-law at Rome, where she 
met the poet Alfieri, whose mistress she 
became. (S ee Alfieri.) She died at Florence 
in 1824. 

Alba'ta, a name sometimes given to Ger¬ 
man-silver. 

Al'batros, a large marine swimming bird 
of several species, of which the wandering 
albatros (Diomedea ex&lans) is the best 
known. The bill is straight and strong, 
the upper mandible hooked at the point 
and the lower one truncated; there are three 
webbed toes on each foot. The upper part 

i 6 











ALBAY-ALBERT. 


of the body is of a grayish brown, and the 
belly white. It is the largest sea-bird 
known, some measuring 17^ feet from tip 
to tip of their expanded wings. They 
abound at the Cape of Good Hope and in 
other parts of the southern seas, and in 
Behring’s Straits, and have been known to 
accompany ships for whole days without 
ever resting on the waves. From this habit 
the bird is regarded with feelings of attach¬ 


ment and superstitious awe by sailors, it 
being reckoned unlucky to kill one. Cole¬ 
ridge has availed himself of this feeling in 
his Ancient Mariner. The albatros is met 
with at great distances from the land, 
settling down on the waves at night to sleep. 
It is exceedingly voracious, whenever food 
is abundant gorging to such a degree as to 
be unable to fly or swim. It feeds on fish, 
carrion, fish-spawn, oceanic mollusca, and 



Wandering Albatros (Diomedia exulans). 


other small marine animals. Its voice is a 
harsh, disagreeable cry. Its nest is a heap 
of earth; its eggs are larger than those of a 
goose. 

Albay (al-bl'), a province, town, bay, and 
volcano in the south-east part of the island of 
Lugon,one of the Philippines. The province 
is mountainous but fertile; the town regular¬ 
ly built, with a population of 13,115; the bay 
capacious, secure, and almost landlocked; 
and the volcano, which is always in activity, 
forms a conspicuous landmark. 

Albemarle, Duke of. See Monk , George. 

Al'bendorf, a village in Prussia, province 
of Silesia, 50 miles s.w. of Breslau, remark¬ 
able for the pilgrimages made to its church 
(which has a miracle-working statue of the 
Virgin), chapels, statues, &c. Pop. 1800. 

Alberoni, Cardinal Giulio (juli-o al- 
ba-ro'ne), born in 1664 in north Italy, and 
educated for the church. The Duke of 
Parma sent him as his minister to Madrid, 
where he gained the affection of Philip V. 
He rose by cunning and intrigue to the 
station of prime-minister, became a cardinal, 
was all-powerful in Spain after the year 
1715, and endeavoured to restore it to its 
ancient splendour. In pursuance of this 
object he invaded Sardinia and Sicily, and 
indeed entertained the idea of stirring up 
a general war in Europe. The alliance of 
France and England, however, rendered his 

schemes abortive, and led to his dismissal 

« * 

and exile in 1720. He wandered about a 
long time under false names, but on the 

77 


accession of Pope Innocent XIII. he was 
restored to all the rights and honours of a 
cardinal. He died at Rome in 1752. 

Al'bert I., Duke of Austria, and after¬ 
wards Emperor of Germany, son of Rodolph 
of Hapsburg, was born in 1248. On the 
death of his father in 1292 he claimed the 
empire, but his arrogant conduct drove the 
electors to choose Adolphus of Nassau em¬ 
peror. Adolphus, after a reign of six years, 
having lost the regard of all the princes of 
the empire, Albert was elected to succeed 
him. A battle ensued near Gellheim, in 
which Adolphus fell by the hand of his 
adversary, who was elected and crowned. 
Pope Boniface VIII., however, refused to 
acknowledge him as emperor, and ordered 
the electoral princes to renounce their alle¬ 
giance to him. On the other hand, Albert 
formed an alliance with Philip le Bel of 
France, and offered so determined and suc¬ 
cessful a resistance to the papal authority 
that Boniface was induced to withdraw his 
opposition, on condition that Albert would 
break with his French ally. During the 
subsequent years of his reign the emperor 
was engaged in unsuccessful wars with 
Holland, Hungary, Bohemia, and other 
states. His measures to still further 
strengthen his authority over the- Swiss 
Forest Cantons of Unterwalden, Schwyz, 
and Uri drove the inhabitants into open 
revolt in Jan. 1308. While on his way to 
crush the Swiss he was assassinated, at 
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1298, by his nephew, 





ALBERT-ALBERT NYANZA. 


John, Duke of Suabia, whose inheritance 
he had seized upon. 

Albert, first Duke of Prussia, and last 
grand-master of the Teutonic Order, was 
born in 1490; died in 1568. In 1511 he was 
chosen by the Teutonic knights grand-mas¬ 
ter of their order. Being nephew of Sigis- 
mund, King of Poland, the knights hoped 
by his means to be freed from the feudal 
superiority of Poland, and placed under the 
protection of the empire. This superiority, 
however, Sigismund refused to surrender, 
and war broke out between uncle and ne¬ 
phew. He subsequently became reconciled 
to his uncle, and obtained his investiture as 
hereditary duke of Prussia under the Polish 
crown, the territorial rights of the Teutonic 
Order being thus set aside. The latter 
years of his reign were spent in organizing 
the government and promoting the pros¬ 
perity of his duchy; he founded schools and 
churches, established a ducal library, and 
opened the University of Konigsbergin 1543. 

Albert, Prince, Albert-Francis-Augus¬ 
tus-Charles-Emmanuel, Prince of Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha, and Prince Consort of Eng¬ 
land, second son of Ernest I., Duke of Saxe- 



Albert, Prince Consort. 


Coburg, was born 26th August, 1819. In 
1837 he entered the University of Bonn, 
where he devoted himself to the studies of 
political and natural science, history, philo¬ 
sophy, &c., as well as to those of music and 
painting. On the 10th Feb. 1840, he 
married his cousin, Queen Victoria of Eng¬ 
land. An allowance of £30,000 a year was 
settled upon the prince, who was naturalized 
by act of Parliament, received the title of 


Royal Highness by patent, was made a 
field-marshal, a Knight of the Garter, of 
the Bath, &c. Other honours were subse¬ 
quently bestowed upon him, the chief of 
which was the title of Prince Consort 
(1857). He always carefully abstained 
from party politics, but never ceased to 
take a deep and active interest in the wel¬ 
fare of the people in general. His services 
to the cause of science and art were very 
important; and the great exhibition of 1851 
owed much of its success to his activity, 
knowledge, and judgment. He presided 
and delivered the inaugural address at the 
meeting of the British Association at Aber¬ 
deen in 1859. He died of typhoid fever on 
December 14, 1861, after a short illness. A 
collection of his speeches and addresses was 
published in 1862. A biography of the 
prince by Sir Theodore Martin has been 
published in five volumes, London, 1875-80. 

Alber'ta, one of the districts of the North¬ 
west Territories of Canada, having Assini- 
boia and Saskatchewan on the east, British 
Columbia on the west, the United States 
on the south, and Athabasca on the north; 
area, 106,100 sq. miles; pop. 1891, 25,278. 
It is a fertile region with trees in the river 
valleys; coal is abundant. Cap. Calgary. 

Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest 
son of Queen Victoria, was born 9th Nov. 
1841. He studied for a session at Edin¬ 
burgh, and afterwards attended the public 
lectures at Oxford and Cambridge. In the 
summer of 1860 he paid a visit to the United 
States and Canada. Two years later he 
travelled in the East and visited Jerusalem. 
On March 10th, 1863, he married Princess 
Alexandra of Denmark, the surviving issue 
being two sons and three daughters. Late 
in 1871 he suffered from a dangerous attack 
of typhoid fever, and his recovery in Feb. 
1872 was celebrated by a national thanks¬ 
giving festival. Between Nov. 1875 and 
March, 1876, the prince was engaged in a 
grand tour of India. He has taken a great 
interest in several exhibitions and institu¬ 
tions, as the Colonial and Indian Exhibi¬ 
tion of 1886, the Royal College of Music, 
and the Imperial Institute. 

Albert Nyan'zd, a lake of Africa, one of 
the head-waters of the Nile, lying (approxi¬ 
mately) between lat. 2° 30' and 1° 10' N., 
and with its north-east extremity in about 
Ion. 28° E. ; general direction from north¬ 
east to south-west, surface abou$ 2500 feet 
above sea-level. It is surrounded by pre¬ 
cipitous cliffs, and bounded on the west 

78 




ALBOIN. 


ALBERTUS MAGNUS 


and south-west by great ranges of moun¬ 
tains. It abounds with fish, and its shores 
are infested with crocodiles and hippopo¬ 
tami. It receives the Victoria Nile from the 
Victoria Nyanza, and the White Nile issues 
from its northern extremity. 

Alber'tus Magnus, or Albert the Great, 
Count of Bollstadt, a distinguished German 
scholar of the thirteenth century, born in 
1193, studied at Padua, became a monk of 
the Dominican order, teaching in the schools 
of Hildesheim, Ratisbon, and Cologne, where 
Thomas Aquinas became his pupil. In 1245 
he went to Paris and publicly expounded 
the doctrines of Aristotle, notwithstanding 
the prohibition of the church. He became 
rector of the school of Cologne in 1249; in 
1254 he was made provincial of his order in 
Germany; and in 1260 he received from 
Pope Alexander IV. the appointment of 
Bishop of Ratisbon. In 1263 he retired to 
his convent at Cologne, where he composed 
many works, especially commentaries on 
Aristotle. He died in 1280. Owing to his 
profound knowledge he did not escape the 
imputation of using magical arts and traf¬ 
ficking with the Evil One. 

Al'bi. See Alby. 

Albigenses (al-bi-jen'sez), a sect which 
spread widely in the south of France and 
elsewhere about the twelfth century, and 
which differed in doctrine and practice from 
the Roman Catholic Church, by which they 
were subjected to severe persecution. They 
are said to have been so named from the 
district of Albi, where, and about Toulouse, 
Narbonne, &c., they were numerous. A 
crusade was begun against them, and Count 
Raymond VI. of Toulouse for tolerating 
them, in 1209, the army of the cross being 
called together by Pope Innocent III. The 
war was carried on with a cruelty which 
reflected deep disgrace upon the Catholic 
Church. Beziers, the capital of Raymond’s 
nephew Roger, was taken by storm, and 
20,000 of the inhabitants, without distinc¬ 
tion of creed, were put to the sword. Simon 
de Montfort, the military leader of the 
crusade, was equally severe towards other 
places in the territory of Raymond and his 
allies. After the death of Raymond VI., in 
1222, his son, Raymond VII., was obliged, 
notwithstanding his readiness to do penance, 
to defend his inheritance against the papal 
legates and Louis VIII. of France. When 
hundreds of thousands had fallen on both 
sides, a peace was made in 1229, by which 
Raymond was obliged to cede Narbonne 

>9 


with other territories to Louis IX., and 
make his son-in-law, a brother of Louis, his 
heir. The heretics were now delivered up 
to the proselytizing Dominicans, and to 
the Inquisition, and they disappeared after 
the middle of the thirteenth century. 

Albina, Multnomah co., Oregon. Pop. 
1890, 5129. 

Albinos (al-bi'noz), the name given to 
those persons from whose skin, hair, and 
eyes, in consequence of some defect in their 
organization, the dark colouring matter is 
absent. The skin of albinos, therefore, 
whether they belong to the white, Indian, 
or negro races, is of a uniform pale milky 
colour, their hair is white, while the iris of 
their eyes is pale rose colour, and the pupil 
intensely red, the absence of the dark pig¬ 
ment allowing the multitude of blood-ves¬ 
sels in these parts of the eye to be seen. 
For the same reason their eyes are not well 
suited to endure the bright light of day, and 
they see best in shade or by moonlight. 
The peculiarity of albinism or leucopathy 
is always born with the individual, and is 
not confined to the human race, having 
been observed also in horses, rabbits, rats, 
mice, &c., birds (white crows or black-birds 
are not particularly uncommon), and fishes. 

Al'bion (Celtic Albainn, probably con¬ 
nected with L. albus, white), the earliest 
name by which the island of Great Britain 
was known, employed by Aristotle, and in 
poetry still used for Great Britain. The 
same word as Albany, Albyn. 

Al'bite, or Soda-felspar, a mineral, a 
kind of felspar, usually of a white colour, to 
which property it owes it name (L. albus, 
white), but occasionally bluish, grayish, 
greenish, or reddish white. 

Al'boin, King of the Lombards, succeeded 
his father Audoin in 561, and reigned in 
Noricum and Pannonia. Narses, the gen¬ 
eral of Justinian, sought his alliance, and 
received his aid, in the war against Totila, 
king of the Ostrogoths. Alboin afterwards 
(in 568) undertook the conquest of Italy, 
where Narses, who had subjected this coun¬ 
try to Justinian, offended by an ungrateful 
court, sought an avenger in Alboin, and 
offered him his co-operation. After a vic¬ 
torious career in Italy he was slain at 
Verona, in 573 or 574, by an assassin, insti¬ 
gated by his wife Rosamond, whose hatred 
he had incurred by sending her, in one of 
his fits of intoxication, a cup wrought from 
the skull of her father, and forcing her to 
drink from it. 



ALBRECHT-ALBUQUERQUE. 


Albrecht (al'breAt), the German form of 
Albert (which see). 

Albrechtsberger (albreAts-ber-ger), 
Johann Georg, a German composer and 
writer on music; a teacher of Beethoven, 
Mosch®les, &c. Born 1736, died 1809. 

Albret, Jeanne d’ (zhan dal-bra), Queen 
of Navarre, wife of Antoine de Bourbon 
and mother of Henri IV. of France, a zea¬ 
lous supporter of the reformed religion, 
which she established in her kingdom; 
born 1528, died (probably poisoned) 1572, 
shortly before the massacre of St. Bartho¬ 
lomew. 

Albuera (al-bu-a'ra), a village of Spain, 
in Estremadura, 12 miles S.S.E. of Badajoz. 
A battle was fought here, May 16, 1811, 
between the army of Marshal Beresford 
(30,000) and that of Marshal Soult (25,000), 
when the latter was obliged to retreat to 
Seville, leaving Badajoz to fall into the 
hands of the allies. 

Albu'go, an affection of the eye, consist¬ 
ing of a white opacity in the cornea; called 
also leucoma. 

Al'bum, a name now generally given to 
a blank book for the reception of pieces of 
poetry, autographs, engravings, photographs, 
&c. 

Albu'men, or Albumin (L., from albus, 
white), a substance, or rather group of sub¬ 
stances, so named from the Latin for the 
white of an egg, which is one of its most 
abundant known forms. It may be taken 
as the type of the protein compounds or the 
nitrogenous class of food stuffs. One va¬ 
riety enters largely into the composition of 
the animal fluids and solids, is coagulable 
by heat at and above 160°, and is composed 
of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, 
with a little sulphur. It abounds in the 
serum of the blood, the vitreous and crystal¬ 
line humours of the eye, the fluid of dropsy, 
the substance called coagulable lymph, in 
nutritive matters, the juice of flesh, &c. 
The blood contains about 7 per cent of albu¬ 
men. Another variety called vegetable al¬ 
bumen exists in most vegetable juices and 
many seeds, and has nearly the same com¬ 
position and properties as egg albumen. 
When albumen coagulates in any fluid it 
readily incloses any substances that may be 
suspended in the fluid. Hence it is used to 
clarify syrupy liquors. In cookery white of 
eggs is employed for clarifying, but in large 
operations like sugar-refining the serum of 
blood is used. From its being coagulable 
by various salts, and especially by corrosive 


sublimate, with which it forms an insoluble 
compound, white of egg is a convenient 
antidote in cases of poisoning by that sub¬ 
stance. With lime it forms a cement to 
inend broken ware. 

In botany the name albumen is given to 
the farinaceous matter which surrounds the 
embryo, the term in this case having no 
reference to chemical composition. It con¬ 
stitutes the meat of the cocoa-nut, the flour 
or meal of cereals, the roasted part of coffee, 
&c. 

AlbumimTria, a condition in which the 
urine contains albumen, evidencing a dis¬ 
eased state of the kidneys. 

Albuhol (al-bu-nyoT), a seaport of south¬ 
ern Spain, prov. Granada, on the Mediter¬ 
ranean. Pop. 8923. 

Albuquerque (al-bu-kerk a), Affonso de, 
an eminent Portuguese admiral, born 1452, 



Affonso de Albuquerque. 


died in 1515. Portugal having subjected 
to its power a large part of the western coast 
of Africa, and begun to extend its sway in 
the East Indies, Albuquerque was appointed 
viceroy of the Portuguese acquisitions in 
this quarter, and arrived in 1503 with a 
fleet on the coast of Malabar. His career 
here was extremely successful, he having 
extended the Portuguese power over Mala¬ 
bar, Ceylon, the Sunda Islands, and the 
Peninsula of Malacca, and made the Portu¬ 
guese name respected by all the nations and 
princes of India. 


80 






ALBURNUM - 

Aibuquetque, the capital of Barnalillo 
county, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande, 
56 miles southwest of Santa F6 ; has a 
large trade in hides and wool. Pop. in 
1890, 5600. 

Albur'num.the soft white substance which, 
in trees, is found be¬ 
tween the liber or inner 
bark and the wood, and, 
in progress of time ac¬ 
quiring solidity, becomes 
itself the wood. A new 
layer of wood, or rather 
of alburnum, is added 
annually to the tree in 
every part just under 
the bark. 

Albury (al'ber-i), a 
rising town of New 
South Wales on the borders of Victoria, on 
the right bank of the Murray, 190 miles 
north-east of Melbourne, in a good agricul¬ 
tural and wine-producing district. Pop. 
5714. 

Alby, or Albi (al'be), an old town of 
southern France, department of Tarn, 42 
miles north-east of Toulouse, on the Tarn, 
in an extensive plain. It has a cathedral, 
a Gothic structure, begun in 12.82; and 
manufactures of linens, cottons, leather, &c. 
Alby is said to have given the Albigenses 
their name. Pop. 14,729. 

Alcee'us, one of the greatest Grecian lyric 
poets, was born at Mitylene, in Lesbos, and 
flourished there at the close of the seventh 
and beginning of the sixth centuries B.C.; 
but of his life little is known. A strong 
manly enthusiasm for freedom and justice 
pervades his lyrics, of which only a few 
fragments are left. He wrote in the H5olic 
dialect, and was the inventor of a metre that 
bears his name, which Horace has employed 
in many of his odes. 

Alcala' de Guadaira (gwa-dl'ra; ‘the 
castle of Guadaira’), a town of southern 
Spain, on the Guadaira, 7 miles east of 
Seville, chiefly celebrated for its manufac¬ 
ture of bread, with which it supplies a large 
part of the population of Seville. Pop. 
7341. 

Alcala' de Henares (en-a'res), a beau¬ 
tiful city of Spain, 16 miles f.n.e. of 
Madrid, 1 mile from the Henares. It has 
an imposing appearance when seen from 
some distance, but on nearer inspection is 
found to be in a state of decay. There was 
formerly a university here, at one time 
attended by 10,000 students; but in 1836 
VOL. I. 81 


— ALCHEMY. 

it was removed with its library to Madrid. 
Cervantes was born here. Pop. 12,317. 

Alcala' la Real (ra-al'), a town of Spain, 
18 miles south-west of Jaen, with a fine 
abbey and some trade. It was captured in 
1340 by Alphonso XI. of Leon, from whence 
it derives the epithet Real (‘Royal’). Pop. 
15,901. 

Alcalde (Spanish ; al-kal-da), or Alcaide 
(Portuguese; al-ld'da; Arabic alqadi, the 
judge), the name of a magistrate in the 
Spanish and Portuguese towns, to whom the 
administration of justice and the regulation 
of the police is committed. His office nearly 
corresponds to that of justice of the peace. 
The name and the office are of Moorish origin. 

Al'camo, a city in the west of Sicily, 
2| miles south of the Gulf of Castellamare, 
near the site of the ancient Segesta, the 
ruins of which, including a well-preserved 
Doric temple and a theatre, as well as the 
remains of Moorish occupation, are still to 
be found here. The district is celebrated 
for its wine, but the town is mean. Pop. 
37,697. 

Alcaniz (al-kan-yeth'), a town of north¬ 
eastern Spain (Aragon). Pop. 7336. 

Alcan'tara (Arabic, ‘the bridge’), an 
ancient town and frontier fortress of Spain, 
on the Tagus, on a rocky acclivity, and 
inclosed by ancient walls. Pop. 4273.— 
Order of Alcantara , an ancient Spanish 
oi'der of knighthood instituted for defence 
against the Moors in 1156, and made a 
military religious order in 1197. 

Alcarraza (al-kar-ra/tha), a vessel made 
of a kind of porous, unglazed pottery, used 
in Spain to hold drinking water, which, 
oozing slightly through the vessel, is kept 
cool by the evaporation that takes place at 
the surface. Similar vessels have been 
long used in Egypt and elsewhere. 

Alcazar de San Juan (al-ka'thar da san- 
Awtin), a town of Spain, province of Ciudad- 
Real (New Castile), with manufactures of 
soap, saltpetre, gunpowder, chocolate, &c. 
Pop. 8721. 

Alce'do. See Kingfisher. 

Alces'tis, in Greek mythology, wife of 
Admetus, king of Thessaly. Her husband 
was ill, and, according to an oracle, would 
die unless some one made a vow to meet 
death in his stead. This was secretly done 
by Alcestis, and Admetus recovered. After 
her decease Hercules brought her back from 
the infernal regions. 

Al'chemy, or Alchymy, the art which 
in former times occupied the place of and 



Alburnum. 


a a, Alburnum or sap- 
wood. bb, Heart-wood, 
c, Pith, dd, Bark. 




ALCIBIADES 


paved the way for the modern science of 
chemistry (as astrology did for astronomy), 
but whose aims were not scientific, being 
confined solely to the discovery of the means 
[>f indefinitely prolonging human life, and 
of transmuting the baser metals into gold 
and silver. Among *the alchemists it was 
generally thought necessary to find a sub¬ 
stance which, containing the original prin¬ 
ciple of all matter, should possess the power 
of dissolving all substances into their ele- 
ments. This general solvent, or menstruum 
universale , which at the same time was to 
possess the power of removing all the seeds 
of disease out of the human body and re¬ 
newing life, was called the philosopher's 
stone, lapis philosophorum, and its pre¬ 
tended possessors were known as adepts. 
Alchemy flourished chiefly in the middle 
ages, though how old might be such notions 
as those b.y which the alchemists were in¬ 
spired it is difficult to say. The mythical 
Hermes Trismegistus of pre-Christian times 
was said to have left behind him many 
books of magical and alchemical learning, 
and after him alchemy received the name 
of the hermetic art. At a later period 
chemistry and alchemy were cultivated 
among the Arabians, and by them the pur¬ 
suit was introduced into Europe. Many of 
the monks devoted themselves to alchemy, 
although they were latterly prohibited from 
studying it by the popes. But there was 
one even among these, John XXII., who 
was fond of alchemy. Raymond Lully, or 
Lullius, a famous alchemist of the thir¬ 
teenth and fourteenth centuries, is said to 
have changed for King Edward I. a mass 
of 50,000 lbs. of quicksilver into gold, of 
which the first rose-nobles were coined. 
Among other alchemists may be mentioned 
g Paracelsus and Basilius Valentinus. When 
more rational principles of chemistry and 
philosophy began to be diffused and to shed 
light on chemical phenomena, the rage for 
alchemy gradually decreased. It is still 
impossible to assert anything with certainty 
about the transmutation of metals. Mod¬ 
ern chemistry, indeed, places metals in the 
class of elements, and denies the possibility 
of changing an inferior metal into gold. 
But hitherto chemistry has not succeeded 
in unfolding the principles by which metals 
are formed and the laws of their produc¬ 
tion, or in aiding or imitating this process 
of nature. 

Alcibi'ades (-dez), an Athenian of high 
family and of great abilities, but of no prin- 


— ALCMAN. 

ciple,was bornat Athens in b.c. 450, being the 
son of Cleinias, and a relative of Pericles, 
who also was his guardian. In youth he 
was remarkable for the beauty of his person, 
no less than for the dissoluteness of his 
manners. He came under the influence of 
Socrates, but little permanent effect was 
produced on his character by the precepts 
of the sage. He acquired great popularity 
by his liberality in providing for the amuse¬ 
ments of the people, and after the death of 
Cleon attained a political ascendency which 
left him no rival but Nicias. Thus he 
played an important part in the long-con¬ 
tinued Peloponnesian war. In 415 he 
advocated the expedition against Sicily, and 
was chosen one of the leaders, but before 
the expedition sailed he was charged with 
profaning and divulging the Eleusinian 
mysteries, and mutilating the busts of Her¬ 
mes, which were set up in public all through 
Athens. Rather than stand his trial he 
went over to Sparta, divulged the plans of 
the Athenians, and assisted the Spartans to 
defeat them. Sentence of death and con¬ 
fiscation was pronounced against him at 
Athens, and he was cursed by the ministers 
of religion. He soon left Sparta and took 
refuge with the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, 
ingratiating himself by his affectation of 
Persian manners, as he had previously done 
at Sparta by a similar affectation of Spartan 
simplicity. He now began to intrigue for 
his return to Athens, offering to bring Tis¬ 
saphernes over to the Athenian alliance, 
and latterly he was recalled and his banish¬ 
ment cancelled. He, however, remained 
abroad for some years in command of the 
Athenian forces, gained several victories, 
and took Chalcedon and Byzantium. In 
B.c. 407 he returned to Athens, but in 406, 
the fleet which he commanded having suf¬ 
fered a severe defeat, he was deprived of his 
command. He once more went over to the 
Persians, taking refuge with the satrap 
Pharnabazus of Phrygia, „and here he was 
assassinated in b.c. 404. 

Alcinous (al-sin'o-us), King of the Phaea- 
cians. See Ulysses. 

Alcira (al-the'ra), a well-built and 
strongly-fortified town of Spain, province 
of Valencia, founded by the Carthaginians. 
Pop. 16,146. 

Alc'man, the chief lyric poet of Sparta, a 
Lydian by birth, flourished between b.c. 671 
and 631, and wrote (in the Doric dialect) 
love songs, hymns, paeans, &c., of which only 
fragments remain. 


82 



ALCMENA 

Alcme'na. See Amphitryon. 

Alco, a small variety of dog, with a small 
head and large pendulous ears, found wild 
in Mexico and Peru, and also domesticated. 

Alcobaca (al-ko-ba/sa), a small town of 
Portugal, 50 miles north of Lisbon, cele¬ 
brated for a magnificent Cistercian monas¬ 
tery founded in 1148 by Don Alphonso I., 
and containing several royal tombs. 

Al'cohol, the purely spirituous or intoxi¬ 
cating part of all liquids that have under¬ 
gone vinous fermentation, extracted by dis¬ 
tillation—a limpid colourless liquid, of an 
agreeable smell and a strong pungent taste. 
When brandy, whisky, and other spirituous 
liquors, themselves distilled from cruder 
materials, are again distilled, highly volatile 
alcohol is the first product to pass off. The 
alcohol thus obtained contains much ex¬ 
traneous matter, including a proportion of 
water, from the first as high as 20 or 25 per 
cent, and increasing greatly as the process 
continues. Charcoal and carbonate of soda 
put in the brandy or other liquor, partly 
retain the fusel-oil and acetic acid it con¬ 
tains. The product thus obtained by dis¬ 
tillation is called rectified spirits or spirits 
of wine , and contains from 55 to 85 per cent 
of alcohol, the rest being water. By dis¬ 
tilling rectified spirits over carbonate of 
potassium, powdered quicklime, or chloride 
of calcium, the greater part of the water is 
retained, and nearly pure alcohol passes 
over. It is only however by very prolonged 
digestion with desiccating agents and sub¬ 
sequent distillation that the last traces of 
water Can be removed. The specific gravity 
of alcohol varies with its purity, decreasing 
as the quantity of water it contains de¬ 
creases. This property is a convenient test 
of the alcoholic strength of liquors that con¬ 
tain only alcohol and water; but on account 
of the condensation that invariably takes 
place on the mixture of these two liquids, 
it can be applied only in connection with 
special tables of reference, or by means of 
an instrument specially adapted for the pur¬ 
pose. (See Alcoholometer.) By simple dis¬ 
tillation the specific gravity of alcohol can 
scarcely be reduced below '825 at 6(T Fahr.; 
by rectification over chloride of calcium it 
may be reduced to '794; as it usually occurs 
it is about '820. Alcohol is composed of 
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, in the pro¬ 
portions expressed by the formula C 2 H60. 
Under a barometric pressure of 29*5 inches 
it boils at 173° Fahr. (78°'4 C.); in the ex¬ 
hausted receiver of an air-pump it boils at 

83 


— ALCOY. 

ordinary temperatures. Its congelation has 
been effected only in recent times at the 
low temperature of - 203° F. Its very low 
freezing-point renders it valuable for use in 
thermometers for very low temperatures. 
Alcohol is extremely inflammable, and burns 
with a pale-blue flame, scarcely visible in 
bright daylight. It occasions no carbon¬ 
aceous deposit upon substances held over it, 
and the products of its combustion are car¬ 
bonic acid and water. The steady and uni¬ 
form heat which it gives during combustion 
makes it a valuable material for lamps. It 
dissolves the vegetable acids, the volatile 
oils, the resins, tan, and extractive matter, 
and many of the soaps; the greater number 
of the fixed oils are taken up by it in small 
quantities only, but some are dissolved 
largely. When alcohol is submitted to dis¬ 
tillation with certain acids a peculiar com¬ 
pound is formed, called ether. It is alcohol 
which gives all intoxicating liquors the pro¬ 
perty whence they are so called. Alcohol 
acts strongly on the nervous system, and 
though in small doses it is stimulating and 
exhilarating, in large doses it acts as a poi¬ 
son. In medicine it is often of great ser¬ 
vice. 

The name alcohol is also applied in chem¬ 
istry to a large group of compounds of car¬ 
bon, hydrogen, and oxygen, whose chemical 
properties are analogous to that of common 
or ethylic alcohol. 

Alcoholism, a morbid condition of the 
body (especially of the nervous system) 
brought on by the immoderate use of alco¬ 
holic liquors. 

Alcoholometer, an instrument construc¬ 
ted on the principle of the hydrometer, to 
determine from the specific gravity of spi¬ 
rituous liquors the percentage of alcohol 
they contain, the scale marking directly the 
required proportion. If the liquor contain 
anything besides water and alcohol, previous 
distillation is necessary. 

Alco'ran. See Koran. 

Al'cott, Louisa May, a distinguished 
American authoress, born in 1832. Shelias 
written a number of books chiefly intended 
for the young: Little Women (1867), An 
Old-fashioned Girl (1869), Little Men(l 871), 
Jack and Gill (1880), &c. Died in 1888. 

Al'cove, a recess in a room, usually sepa¬ 
rated from the rest of the room by columns, 
a balustrade, or by curtains, and often con¬ 
taining a bed or Seats. 

Alcoy', a town of Spain, in Valencia, 24 
miles north by west of Alicante, in a richly 



ALCUDIA-ALDERMAN. 


cultivated district. There is a Roman bridge 
over the river, and the town has a very 
picturesque appearance; its chief manufac¬ 
tures are paper and woollens. Pop. 32,497. 

Alcudia, Duke of. See Godoy. 

Alcuin (alk'win; in his native tongue 
Ealhivine), a learned Englishman, the con¬ 
fidant, instructor, and adviser of Charles 
the Great (Charlemagne). He was born at 
York in 735, and was educated and latterly 
had the management of the school at York. 
Alcuin having gone to Rome, Charlemagne 
became acquainted with him at Parma, in¬ 
vited him in 782 to his court, and made 
use of his services in his endeavours to civi¬ 
lize his subjects. To secure the benefit of 
his instructions Charlemagne established at 
his court a school, called Schola Palatina, 
or the Palace School. In the royal academy 
Alcuin was called Flaccus Albinus. Most of 
the schools in France were either founded 
or improved by him; thus he founded the 
school in the abbey of St. Martin of Tours, 
in 796, after the plan of the school in York. 
Alcuin left the court in 801, and retired to 
the abbey of St. Martin of Tours, but kept 
up a constant correspondence with Charles 
to his death in 804. He left works on the- 
ology, philosophy, rhetoric, also poems and 
letters, all of which have been published. 

Alcyona'ria, ccelenterate animals forming 
a great division of the class Actinozoa (see 



Alcyonaria. 


1, Sea-fan (GorgOnia flabellum). 2. Sea-pen (Pennatffla 
phosphorea). 3, Comul&ria rugosa. 

Sea-anemone). These animals are nearly 
all composite, and the individual polyps 
have mostly eight tentacles. They include 
the organ-pipe corals, sea-pens, fan-corals, 
&c., as also the red coral of commerce. 
The polyps essentially resemble those of the 


genus Alcyonium in structure, and in the 
number and arrangement of the tentacles. 
See Alcyonium. 

Alcyo'nium, a genus of coelenterate ani¬ 
mals, one familiar species of which, dredged 
around the British coasts— A. digitatum — 
is named ‘ Dead-Men’s Fingers,’ or ‘ Cow’s 
Paps,’ from its lobed or digitate appearance. 
It grows attached to stones, shells, and other 
objects. It consists of a mass of little 
polyps, each polyp possessing eight little 
fringed tentacles disposed around a central 
mouth. The Alcyonium forms the type of 
the Alcyonaria. 

Al'dan, a river of Eastern Siberia, a trib¬ 
utary of the Lena, 1200 miles in length. 
The Aldan Mountains run along parallel to 
it on the left for 400 miles. 

Aldeb'aran, a star of the first magnitude, 
forming the eye of the constellation Taurus 
or the Bull, the brightest of the five stars 
known to the Greeks as the Hyades. Spec¬ 
trum analysis has shown it to contain anti¬ 
mony, bismuth, iron, mercury, hydrogen, 
sodium, calcium, &c. 

Al'dehyde, the oxidation product of an 
alcohol intermediate between it and its acid. 
Common aldehyde (C. 2 H 4 0) is derived from 
spirit of wine by oxidation, and is a colour¬ 
less, limpid, volatile,and inflammable liquid, 
with a peculiar ethereal odour, which is 
suffocating when strong; specific gravity, 
0’79. It oxidizes in air, and is converted 
into acetic acid. It rapidly decomposes 
oxide of silvei', depositing a brilliant film of 
metallic silver; hence it is used in silvering 
curved glass surfaces. 

Alder (al der; A Inus ), a genus of plants, nat. 
order Betulacese (Birch), consisting of trees 
and shrubs inhabiting the temperate and 
colder regions of the globe. Common alder 
(Alnus glutinosa) is a tree which grows 
in wet situations in Europe, Asia, and the 
United States. Its wood, light and soft and 
of a reddish colour, is used for a variety of 
purposes, and is well adapted for work which 
is to be kept constantly in water. The roots 
and knots furnish a beautifully-veined wood 
well suited for cabinet work. The bark is 
used in tanning and leather dressing, and 
by fishermen for staining their nets. This 
and the young twigs are sometimes em¬ 
ployed in dyeing, and yield different shades 
of yellow and red. With the addition of 
copperas it yields a black dye. 

Al'derman (al'der-; Anglo-Saxon ealdor- 
man, from ealdor , older, and man), among 
the Anglo-Saxons a person of a rank equi- 

84 





ALDERNEY- 

valent to that of an earl or count, the gov¬ 
ernor of a shire or county, and member of 
the witena-gemdt or great council of the 
nation. Aldermen, at present, are officers 
associated with the mayor of a city for the 
administration of the municipal government 
in England and the United States. 

Al derney (French Aurigny), an island 
belonging to Britain off the coast of Nor¬ 
mandy, 10 miles due west of Cape La Hogue, 
and 60 from the nearest point of England, 
the most northerly of the Channel Islands, 
between 3 and 4 miles long, and about l| 
broad. The coast is bold and rocky, the 
interior is fertile. About a third of the 
island is occupied by grass lands; and the 
Alderney cows, a small-sized but handsome 
breed, are famous for the richness of their 
milk. The climate is mild and healthy. 
A judge, with six ‘jurats,’ chosen by the 
people for life, and twelve ‘ douzaniers,’ re¬ 
presentatives of the people, form a kind of 
local legislature. The French language still 
prevails among the inhabitants, but all un¬ 
derstand and many speak English. The 
Race of Alderney is the strait between the 
coast of France and this island. Pop. 2039. 

Aldershot (al'der-), a town and military 
station in England, the latter having given 
rise to the former. The ‘camp’ was origi¬ 
nated in 1854 by the purchase by government 
of a tract of moorland known as Aldershot 
Heath, on the confines of Surrey, Hamp¬ 
shire, and Berkshire. The object was to 
accustom both officers and soldiers to act 
more readily when drawn up in brigades 
and divisions, their practice having been 
limited for the most part, since the termi¬ 
nation of the French war, to the movements 
of battalions and companies. It was also 
deemed advisable to accustom the army to 
camp life, and to exercise the men in all the 
evolutions and movements which they might 
be required to perform when brought into 
actual contact with the enemy. The ac¬ 
commodation provided for the army, officers 
as well as men, consisted at first of wooden 
huts; but these have been superseded by 
brick barracks, erected at a cost of nearly 
£300,000, there being now a North and a 
South Camp. The men are exercised in 
marching, skirmishing, and similar field 
operations, which are carried on during the 
summer months with great activity; they 
are also instructed in the camp in culinary 
and other duties. The number of troops 
usually maintained at Aldershot is about 
7000. The town is in the neighbourhood 

85 


— ALDRICH. 

of the barracks, immediately beyond the 
government ground, and in Hampshire. It 
contains several churches, and has schools, 
newspapers, literary institutes, music-halls, 
&c. Pop. (including military), 25,595. 

Ald'helm, an Anglo-Saxon scholar and 
prelate, Bishop of Sherborne, born 640 (?), 
died 709. He was a great fosterer of 
learning and builder of churches, and has 
left Latin writings on theological subjects. 

Al'dine Editions, the name given to the 
works which proceeded from the press of 
Aldus Manutius and his family at Venice 
(1490-1597). (See Manutius.) Recom¬ 
mended by their value, as well as by a 
splendid exterior, they have gained the re¬ 
spect of scholars and the attention of book- 
collectors. Many of them are the first 
printedoditions(ed^mncsprmc^cs) of Greek 
and Latin classics. Others are texts of the 
modern Italian authors. These editions are 
of importance in the history of printing. 
Aldus had nine kinds of Greek type, and 
no one before him printed so much and so 
beautifully in this language. Of the Latin 
character he procured fourteen kinds of 
type. 

Aldobrandi'ni, the name of a Florentine 
family, latterly of princely rank (now ex¬ 
tinct), which produced one pope (Clement 
VIII.) and several cardinals, archbishops, 
bishops, and men of learning. —Aldobran- 
dini Marriage, an ancient fresco painting 
belonging probably to the time of Augustus, 
discovered in 1606, and acquired by Car¬ 
dinal Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement 
VIII., now in the Vatican. It represents 
a marriage scene in which ten persons are 
portrayed, and is considered one of the 
most precious relics of ancient art. 

Al'dred, or Ealbred, Anglo-Saxon pre¬ 
late, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop 
of York, bom 1000 (?), died 1069. He im¬ 
proved the discipline of the church and 
built several ecclesiastical edifices. On the 
death of Edward the Confessor he is said to 
have crowned Harold. Having submitted 
to the Conqueror, whose esteem he enjoyed 
and whose power he made subservient to 
the views of the church, he also crowned 
him as well as Matilda. 

Aldrich, Henry, Dean of Christchurch, 
Oxford; born in 1647, died in 1710; dis¬ 
tinguished as a writer on logic, as an archi¬ 
tect, and as a musician. His Compendium 
of Logic was a text-book till quite recently. 
He adapted many of the works of the older 
musicians, such as Palestrina and Carissimi, 



ALDRICH — 

to the liturgy of the Church of England, 
and composed many services and anthems, 
some of which are still heard in English 
cathedrals. 

Ald'rich, Thomas Bailey, an American 
poet and writer of prose tales, mostly hu¬ 
morous, born in 1836, was a short time in a 
mercantile house, but soon adopted litera¬ 
ture as a profession; and was for a time 
editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He has 
written in verse: The Bells; Ballad of Baby 
Bell; Pampinea and other Poems; Cloth of 
Gold and other Poems; Flower and Thorn; 
in prose: Daisy’s Necklace; Story of a Bad 
Boy; Marjory Daw; Prudence Palfrey, &c. 

Aldrovan'di, Ulysses, a distinguished 
Italian naturalist; born 1522, died 1605. 
He was professor at Bologna, and estab¬ 
lished botanical gardens and museum of 
natural history there ; wrote a work on 
natural history in thirteen vols. 

Ale and Beer, well known and exten¬ 
sively used fermented liquors, the principle 
of which is extracted from several sorts of 
grain but most commonly from barley, after 
it has undergone the process termed malt¬ 
ing. Beer is a more general term than ale, 
being often used for any kind of fermented 
malt liquor, including porter, though it is 
also used in a more special signification. 
See Brewing. 

Aleardi (a-la-ar'de), Aleardo, a distin¬ 
guished Italian lyrical and political poet 
and patriot, born 1812, died 1878; latterly 
member of the Italian board of higher 
education and senator. 

Ale-conner, formerly an officer in England 
appointed to assay ale and beer, and to take 
care that they were good and wholesome, 
and sold at a proper price. The duty of the 
ale-conners of London w r as to inspect the 
measures used in public-houses, to prevent 
frauds in selling liquors. Four of these were 
chosen annually by the liverymen, in com¬ 
mon hall, on Midsummer’s Day. 

Ale-cost. See Costmary. 

Alec'to, in Gi’eek mythology, one of the 
Furies (which see). 

Aleman (a-le-man'), Mateo, a Spanish 
novelist, born about the middle of the six¬ 
teenth century, died in 1610. His fame 
rests on his Life and Adventures of the 
Rogue Guzman de Alfarache, one of the 
best of the picaresque or rogue novels, 
which give such a lively picture of the 
shady classes of society in Spain during 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
The hero becomes in succession stable-boy, 


- ALEMBERT. 

beggar, porter, thief, man of fashion, sol¬ 
dier, valet, merchant, student, robber, gal¬ 
ley-slave, and lastly his own biographer. 

Aleman'ni, or Alamanni, a confederacy 
of several German tribes which, at the 
commencement of the third century after 
Christ, lived near the Roman territory, 
and came then and subsequently into con¬ 
flict with the imperial troops. Caracalla 
first fought with them in 213, but did not 
conquer them; Severus was likewise unsuc¬ 
cessful. About 250 they began to cross the 
Rhine westwards, and in 255 they overran 
Gaul along with the Franks. In 259 a 
body of them was defeated in Italy at 
Milan, and in the following year they were 
driven out of Gaul by Postumus. But 
the Alemanni did not desist from their 
incursions, notwithstanding the numerous 
defeats they suffered at the hands of the 
Roman troops. In the fourth century they 
crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul, but 
were severely defeated by the Emperor 
Julian and driven back. Subsequently they 
occupied a considerable territory on both 
sides of the Rhine; but at last Clovis broke 
their power in 496 and deprived them of a 
large portion of their possessions. Part of 
their territory was latterly formed into a 
duchy called Alemannia or Swabia, this 
name being derived from Suevi or Swa¬ 
bians, the name which they gave them¬ 
selves. It is from the Alemanni that the 
French have derived their names for Ger¬ 
mans and Germany in general, namely, 
Allemands and Allemagne, though strictly 
speaking only the modern Swabians and 
northern Swiss are the proper descendants 
of that ancient race. 

Alembert (a-lan-bar), J ean le Rond d’, 
a French mathematician and philosopher, 
born in Paris in 1717, and died there in 
1783. He was the illegitimate son of 
Madame de Tencin, and was exposed at 
the Church of St. Jean le Rond (hence his 
name) soon after birth. He was brought xip 
by the wife of a poor glazier, and with her 
he lived for more than forty years. His 
parents never publicly acknowledged him, 
but his father settled upon him an income 
of 1200 livres. He showed much quickness 
in learning, entered the College Mazarin at 
the age of twelve, and studied mathematics 
with enthusiasm and success. Having left 
college he studied law and became an advo¬ 
cate, but did not cease to occupy himself 
with mathematics. A pamphlet on the mo¬ 
tion of solid bodies in a fluid, and another 

86 



ALEMBIC-ALEPPO. 


on the integral calculus, which he laid be¬ 
fore the Academy of Sciences in 1739 and 
1740, showed him in so favourable a light 
that the Academy received him in 1741 into 
the number of its members. He soon after 
published his famous work on dynamics, 
Traits de Dynamique (1743); and that on 
fluids, 1 rait6 des Fluides. He also took a 
part in the investigations which completed 
the discoveries of Newton respecting the 
motion of the heavenly bodies, and pub¬ 
lished at intervals various important astro¬ 


nomical dissertations, as well as on other 
subjects. He also took part, with Diderot and 
others, in the celebrated Encyclopedic, for 
which he wrote the Discours Prdliminaire, as 
well as many philosophical and almost all the 
mathematical articles. He received an in¬ 
vitation from the Russian empress Catherine 
II. to go to St. Petersburg, and Frederick 
the Great invited him to Berlin, but in vain. 
From Frederick, however, he accepted a 
pension. There was an intimate friendship 
between him and Voltaire. 



Aleppo. 


Alem'bic, a simple apparatus sometimes 
used by chemists for distillation. The cucur¬ 
bit, or body, contains the substance to be 
distilled, and is usually somewhat like a 
bottle, bulging below and narrowing towards 
the top; the head, of a globular form, with 
a flat under-ring, fits on to the neck of the 
cucurbit, condenses the vapour from the 
heated liquid, and receives the distilled 
liquid on the ring inclosing the neck of the 
lower vessel, and thus causes it to find egress 
by a discharging pipe into the third section, 
called the receiver. See Distillation. 

Alemtejo (a- lan - ta'zho; ‘beyond the 
Tagus’), the largest province of Portugal, 
and the most southern except Algarve; area, 
10,255 square miles; pop. 367,169. The 
capital is Evora. 

Alencon (a-lan-son), a town of France, 
capital of department Orne, and formerly 
of the Duchy of Alencon, on the right bank 
of the Sarthe, 105 miles west by south of 
Paris ; well built; has a fine Gothic church 
(fifteenth century), and interesting remains 
of the old castle of the dukes d’Alencon. 

87 


Alencon was long famed for its point-lace, 
called ‘point dAJemjon,’ a branch of indus¬ 
try now much fallen off; it has cotton and 
flax spinning and weaving, &c.; fine rock- 
crystal, yielding the so-called ‘diamants 
d’Alengon,’ is found in the neighbouring 
granite quarries. Pop. 17,237.— Alencon, 
originally a county, later a dukedom, became 
united with the crown in 1221, and was given 
by Louis XI. as an appanage to his fifth 
son, with whom the branch of the Alen^on- 
Valois commenced. The first duke of the 
name lost his life at the battle of Agincourt 
in 1415; another, called Charles IV., mar¬ 
ried the 4 celebrated Margaret of Valois, 
sister of Francis I. He commanded the 
left wing of the French army at the battle 
of Pavia, where, instead of supporting the 
king at a critical moment, he fled at the 
head of his troops, the consequence of which 
was the loss of the battle and the capture of 
the king. 

Alentejo. See Alemtejo. 

Alep'po, a city of Asiatic Turkey, in 
North Syria, on the river Koik, in a fine 










ALESHKI 


plain 60 miles south-east of Alexandretta, 
which is its port, and 195 miles N.N.E. of 
Damascus. It has a circumference of about 
7 miles, and consists of the old town and 
numerous suburbs. Its appearance at a 
distance is striking, and the houses are well 
built of stone. On a hill stands the citadel, 
and at its foot the governor’s palace. Pre¬ 
vious to 1822 Aleppo contained about 
100 mosques, but in that year an earth¬ 
quake laid the greater part of them in 
ruins, and destroyed nearly the whole city. 
The aqueduct built by the Romans is the 
oldest monument of the town. Among the 
chief attractions of Aleppo are its gardens, 
in which the pistachio-nut is extensively 
cultivated. Formerly the city was the 
centre of a great import and export trade, 
and its manufactures, consisting of shawls, 
cottons, silks, gold and silver lace, &c., were 
very valuable, but the earthquake already 
mentioned and various other causes have 
combined to greatly lessen its prosperity. 
It has still a trade’ however, in wool, cotton, 
silk, wax, skins, soap, tobacco, &c., and im¬ 
ports a certain quantity of European manu¬ 
factures.—Aleppo was a place of consider¬ 
able importance in very remote times. By 
the Greeks and Romans it was called Bercea. 
It was conquered by the Arabs in 638, and 
its original name Chalybon w’as then turned 
into Haleb , whence the Italian form Aleppo. 
Its population, 200,000 at the beginning 
of the century, is now estimated at over 
100,000, of whom perhaps 25,000 are Chris¬ 
tians. The language generally spoken is 
Arabic. 

Alesh'ki, a town of Southern Russia, 
gov. Taurida. Pop. 8915. 

Ale'sia, a town and fortress of ancient 
Gaul, at which in B.c. 52 Julius Caesar in¬ 
flicted a crushing defeat on the Gauls under 
Vercingetorix. It is now represented by 
the village of Alise, department Cote d’Or, 
near which Napoleon III. erected a colossal 
statue of Vercingetorix in 1865. 

Alessan'dria, a town and fortress in 
North Italy, capital of the province of the 
same name, in a marshy country, near the 
junction of the Bormida and the Tanaro. It 
was built in 1168 by the Cremonese and 
Milanese, and was named in honour of 
Pope Alexander III., who made it a bishop’s 
see. It has a cathedral, important manu¬ 
factures of linen, woollen, and silk goods, 
and an active trade. It ranks as one of the 
first fortresses of Europe, the fortifications 
including a surrounding wall and bastions, 


ALEXANDER. 

and a strong citadel on the opposite side of 
the Tanaro, connected by a bridge with the 
town. Pop. 30,761. 

Ales'si, Galeazzo, a distinguished Italian 
architect, born at Perugia, 1512, died there 
in 1572. Many palaces, villas, and churches 
were erected after his designs. 

Aletsch'-glacier, the greatest glacier in 
Switzerland, canton Vaud, a prolongation 
of the immense mass of glaciers connected 
with the Jungfrau, the Aletschhorn (14,000 
ft.), and other peaks; about 15 miles long. 

Aleurom'eter, an instrument for indicat¬ 
ing the bread-making qualities of wheaten 
flour. The indications depend upon the 
expansion of the gluten contained in a given 
quantity of flour when freed of its starch by 
pulverization and repeated washings with 
\»ater. 

Aleutian Islands, a chain of about eighty 
small islands belonging to the United 
States, separating the Sea of Kamtchatka 
from the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, 
and extending nearly 1000 miles from east 
to west between Ion. 172° e. and 163° w.; 
total area, 6391 square miles; pop. 1220. 
They are of volcanic formation, and in a 
number of them there are volcanoes still in 
activity. Their general appearance is dis¬ 
mal and barren, yet grassy valleys capable 
of supporting cattle throughout the year 
are met with, and potatoes, turnips, and 
other vegetables are successfully cultivated. 
They afford also an abundance of valuable 
fur and of fish. The natives belong to the 
same stock with those of Kamtchatka. 

Ale'wife (corruption of the Indian name), 
the Alosa tyrannus, a fish of the same 
genus as the shad, growing to the length of 
12 inches, and taken in great quantities in 
the mouths of the rivers of New England, 
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, being 
salted and exported. 

Alexander, surnamed the Great, was the 
son of Philip of Macedon and his queen 
Olympias, and was born at Pella, B.C. 356. 
In youth he had Aristotle as instructor, 
and he early displayed uncommon abilities. 
The victory of Chaeronea in 338, which 
brought Greece entirely under Macedonia, 
was mainly decided by his efforts. Philip 
having been assassinated, B.c. 336, Alexan¬ 
der, not yet twenty years of age, ascended 
the throne. His father had been preparing 
an expedition against the Persians and 
Alexander determined to carry it out; but 
before doing so he had to chastise the bar¬ 
barian tribes on the frontiers of Macedon 

88 



ALEXANDER. 


aa well as quell a rising in Greece, in which 
he took and destroyed Thebes, put 6000 of 
the inhabitants to the sword, and carried 
30,000 into captivity. Leaving Antipater 
to govern in his stead in Europe, and being 
confirmed as commander-in-chief of the 
Greek forces in the general assembly of the 
Greeks, he crossed over the Hellespont into 
Asia, in the 
spring of 334, 
with 30,000 foot 
and 5000 horse. 

His first encoun¬ 
ter with the Per¬ 
sian forces (as¬ 
sisted by Greek 
mercenaries) was 
at the small river 
Granlcus, where 
he gained a com¬ 
plete victory. 

Most of the cities 
of Asia Minor now opened their gates to 
the victor, and Alexander restored demo¬ 
cracy in all the Greek cities. In passing 
through Gordium he cut the Gordian 
knot, on which it was believed the fate 
of Asia depended, and then conquered 
Lycia, Ionia, Caria, Pamphylia, and Cap¬ 
padocia. A sickness, caused by bathing in 
the Cydnus (B.c. 333), checked his course; 
but scarcely was he restored to health when 
he continued his onward course, and this 
same year defeated the Persian emperor Da¬ 
rius and his army of 500,000 or 600,000 men, 
(including 50,000 Greek mercenaries) near 
Issus (inner angle of the Gulf of Alexan- 
dretta). Darius fled towards the interior 
of his dominions, leaving his family and 
treasures to fall into the hands of the 
conqueror. Alexander did not pursue Da¬ 
rius, but proceeded southwards, and secured 
all the towns along the Mediterranean 
Sea, though he did not get possession of 
lyre (taken 332 B.c.) without a siege of 
seven months. Palestine and Egypt now 
fell before him, and in the latter he 
founded Alexandria, which became one of 
the first cities of ancient times. Hence 
he went through the desert of Libya, to con¬ 
sult the oracle of Zeus Ammon, and it was 
said that the god recognized him as his son. 
On his return Alexander marched against 
Darius, who had collected an immense army 
in Assyria, and rejected the proposals of 
his rival for peace. A battle was fought 
at Gaugamela, about 50 miles from Arbela, 
b.c. 331, and notwithstanding the immense 

89 


numerical superiority of his enemy, Alexan¬ 
der (who had but 40,000 men and 7000 horse) 
gained a complete victory. Babylon and 
Susa opened their gates to the conqueror, 
who marched towards Persepolis, the capi¬ 
tal of Persia, and entered it in triumph. He 
now seems for a time to have lost his self- 
command. He gave himself up to arrogance 
and dissipation, and is said in a fit of intoxi¬ 
cation to have set fire to the palace of Per¬ 
sepolis, one of the wonders of the world. 
Rousing himself up, however, he set out 
in pursuit of Darius, who, having lost his 
throne, was kept prisoner by Bessus, satrap 
of Bactriana, who, when he saw himself 
closely pursued, caused Darius to be assas¬ 
sinated (b.c. 330). Continuing his progress 
he subdued Bessus, and advanced to the Jax- 
artes, the extreme eastern limit of the em¬ 
pire, but did not fully subdue the whole of 
this region till 328, some fortresses holding 
out with great tenacity. In one of these 
he took prisoner the beautiful Roxana, 
daughter of Oxyartes, a nobleman of Sog- 
diana, and having fallen in love with her 
he married her. Meantime disaffection had 
once or twice manifested itself among his 
Macedonian followers and had been cruelly 
punished; and he had also, to his lasting 
remorse, killed his faithful friend Cleitus 
in a fit of drunken rage. Alexander now 
formed the idea of conquering India, then 
scarcely known even by name. He passed 
the Indus (b.c. 326), marched towards the 
Hydaspes (Jhelum), at the passage of which 
he conquered a king named Porus in a bloody 
battle, and advanced victoriously through 
the north-west of India, and intended to 
proceed as far as the Ganges, when the 
murmurs of his army compelled him to 
return. On the Hydaspes he built a fleet, 
in which he sent a part of his army down 
the river, while the rest proceeded along 
the banks. By the Hydaspes he reached 
the Acesines (Chenab), and thus the Indus, 
down which he sailed to the sea. Nearchus, 
his admiral, sailed hence to the Persian 
Gulf, while Alexander directed his march 
by land to Babylon, losing a great part of 
his troops in the desert through which he 
had to pass. In Susa he married Statira, 
the eldest daughter of Darius, and rewarded 
those of his Macedonians w ho had married 
Persian women, because it was his intention 
to unite the two nations as closely as pos¬ 
sible. At Opis, on the Tigris, a mutiny 
arose among his Macedonians (in 324), who 
thought he showed too much favour to the 



Coin of Alexander the Great. 


ALEXANDER — 

Asiatics; by firmness and policy he suc¬ 
ceeded in quelling this rising, and sent home 
10,000 veterans with rich rewards. Soon 
after, his favourite, Hephfestion, died at 
Ecbatana, and Alexander’s grief was un¬ 
bounded. The favourite was royally buried 
at Babylon, and here Alexander was engaged 
in extensive plans for the future, when he 
became suddenly sick, after a banquet, and 
died in a few days (323 B.C.), in his thirty- 
third year, after a reign of twelve years and 
eight months. His body was after a time 
conveyed to Egypt with great splendour by 
his general Ptolemy. He left behind him 
an immense empire, which was divided 
among his chief generals, and became the 
scene of continual wars. The reign of Alex¬ 
ander constitutes an important period in 
the history of humanity. His career was 
not merely a series of empty conquests, but 
was attended with the most important re¬ 
sults. The language, and much of the 
civilization of Greece, followed in his track; 
large additions were made to the sciences 
of geography, natural history, &c.; a road 
was opened to India; and the products of 
the farthest east were introduced into Eu¬ 
rope. Greek kingdoms, under his generals 
and their successors, continued to exist in 
Asia for centuries. 

Alexander, the name of eight popes, the 
earliest of whom, Alexander I., is said to 
have reigned from 109 to 119. The most 
famous (or infamous) is Alexander VI. 
(Borgia), who was born at Valencia, in 
Spain, in 1431, and died in 1503. When 
he was only twenty-five years of age his 
uncle, Pope Calixtus III., made him a car¬ 
dinal, and shortly afterwards appointed 
him to the dignified and lucrative office of 
vice-chancellor. By bribery he prepai’ed 
his way to the papal throne, which he 
attained in 1492, after the death of Inno¬ 
cent VIII. Both the authority and reve¬ 
nues of the popes being at this time much 
impaired, he set himself to reduce the power 
of the Italian princes, and seize upon their 
possessions for the benefit of his ow r n family. 
To effect this end he is said not to have 
scrupled to use the vilest means, including 
poison and assassination. His policy, foreign 
as well as domestic, was faithless and base, 
and his private life was stained by sensual¬ 
ity. He understood how to extract immense 
sums of money from all Christian countries 
under various pretexts. Pie sold indul¬ 
gences, and set aside, in favour of himself, 
the wills of several cardinals. His excesses 


ALEXANDER I. 

roused against him the’ powerful eloquence 
of Savonarola, who, by pen and pulpit, urged 
his deposition, but had to meet his death at 
the stake in 1498. Not long after his elec¬ 
tion Alexander had the honour of deciding 
the dispute between the kings of Portugal 
and Castile concerning their respective 
claims to the foreign countries recently dis¬ 
covered. His son, Cesare Borgia, and his 
daughter Lucrezia, are equally notorious 
with himself. 

Alexander, the name of three Scottish 
kings. Alexander I., a son of Malcolm 
Canmore and Margaret of England, suc¬ 
ceeded his brother Edgar in 1107, and 
governed with great ability till his death in 
1124. He was a great benefactor of the 
church, and a firm vindicator of the national 
independence. — Alexander II. was born 
in 1198, and succeeded his father William 
the Lion in 1214. He was a wise and 
energetic prince, and Scotland prospered 
greatly under him, though disturbed by the 
Norsemen, by the restlessness of some of 
the Celtic chiefs, and by the attempts of 
Henry III. of England to make Alexander 
do homage to him. Alexander married 
Henry’s sister, Joan, in 1221, who lived till 
1238. In 1244 war with England almost 
broke out, but was fortunately averted. 
Alexander died in 1248 at Kerrera, an 
island opposite Oban, when on an expedi¬ 
tion in which he hoped to wrest the 
Hebrides from Norway. He was succeeded 
by his son, Alexander III., a boy of eight, 
who in 1251 married Margaret, eldest 
daughter of Henry III. of England. Like 
his father he was eager to bring the He¬ 
brides under his sway, and this he was 
enabled to accomplish in a few years after 
the defeat of the Norse King Haco at 
Largs, in 1263. The mainland and islands 
of Scotland w’ere now under one sovereign, 
though Orkney and Shetland still belonged 
to Norway. Alexander was strenuous in 
asserting the independence both of the Scot¬ 
tish kingdom and the Scottish church 
against England. He died in 1285 by the 
falling of his horse while he was riding in 
the dark between Burntisland and Kinghorn. 
He left as his heiress Margaret, the Maiden 
of Norway, daughter of Eric of Norway, 
and of Alexander’s daughter, Margaret. 
Under him Scotland enjoyed greater pros-^ 
perity than for generations afterwards. 

Alexander I., Emperor of Pcussia, son of 
Paul I. and Maria, daughter of Prince 
Eugene of Wurtemberg, was born in 1777, 

90 



ALEXANDER II. — 

and died in 1825. On the assassination of 
his father, in 1801, Alexander ascended the 
throne, and one of his first acts was to con¬ 
clude peace with Britain, against which his 
predecessor had declared war. In 1803 he 
offered his services as mediator between 
England and France, and tw T o years later a 
convention was entered into between Rus¬ 
sia, England, Austria, and Sweden for the 
purpose of resisting the encroachments of 
France on the territories of independent 
states. He was present at the battle of 
Austerlitz (1805), when the combined armies 
of Russia and Austria were defeated by 
Napoleon. In the succeeding campaign the 
Russians were again beaten at Eylau (8th 
February, 1807) and Friedland (14th June), 
the result of which was an interview, be¬ 
tween Alexander and Napoleon, and the 
treaty at Tilsit. The Russian emperor now 
for a time identified himself with the Napo¬ 
leonic schemes, and soon obtained possession 
of Finland and an extended territory on the 
Danube. The French alliance, however, he 
found to be too oppressive, and his having 
separated himself from Napoleon led to the 
disastrous French invasion of 1812. In 
1813 he published a manifesto which served 
as the basis of the coalition of the other Euro¬ 
pean powei'S against France, which was fol¬ 
lowed by the capture of Paris (in 1814), the 
abdication of Napoleon and the restoration 
of the Bourbons, and the utter overthrow of 
Napoleon the following year. After Water¬ 
loo, Alexander, accompanied by the Em¬ 
peror of Austria and the King of Prussia, 
made his second entrance into Paris, where 
they concluded the treaty known as the 
Holy Alliance. The remaining part of his 
reign was chiefly taken up in measures of 
internal reform, including the gradual aboli¬ 
tion of serfdom, and the promotion of educa¬ 
tion, agriculture, commerce, and manu¬ 
factures, as well as literature and the fine 
arts. 

Alexander II., Emperor of Russia, was 
bom April 29, 1818, and succeeded his 
father Nicholas in 1855, before the end of 
the Crimean war. After peace was con¬ 
cluded the new emperor set about effecting 
reforms in the empire, the greatest of all 
being the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, 
a measure which gave freedom, on certain 
conditions, to 22,000,000 of human beings 
" who were previously in a state little removed 
from that of slavery. Under him, too, repre¬ 
sentative assemblies in the provinces were 
introduced, and he also did much to improve 

91 


- ALEXANDRETTA. 

education, and to reorganize the judicial 
system. During his reign the Russian 
dominions in Central Asia were extended, 
a piece of territory south of the Cauoasus, 
formerly belonging to Turkey, was acquired, 
and a part of Bessarabia, belonging since 
the Crimean war to Turkey in Europe, but 
previously to Russia, was restored to the 
latter power. The latter additions resulted 
from the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. 
He was killed by an explosive missile flung 
at him (by a Nihilist it is supposed) in a 
street in St. Petersburg, 13th March, 1881. 
He was succeeded by his second son, Alex¬ 
ander III., his eldest son having died in 
youth. His only daughter is the wife of 
the Duke of Edinburgh. 

Alexander of Hales. See Hales (Alex¬ 
ander de). 

Alexander Nevskoi, a Russian hero and 
saint, son of the Grand-duke Jaroslav, born 
in 1219, died in 1263. He fought valiantly 
against assaults of the Mongols, the Danes, 
Swedes, and knights of the Teutonic order. 
He gained the name of Nevskoi in 1240, for 
a splendid victory, on the Neva, over the 
Swedes. The gratitude of his countrymen 
commemorated the hero in popular sojigs, 
and raised him to the dignity of a saint. 
Peter the Great built a splendid monastery 
at St. Petersburg in his honour, and in 
memory of him established the order of 
Alexander Nevskoi. 

Alexander Seve'rus, a Roman empei’or, 
born in 205, died 235 a.d. He was raised to 
the imperial dignity in 222 a.d. by the prae¬ 
torian guards, after they had put his cousin 
the emperor Heliogabalus to death. He 
governed ably both in peace and war; and 
also occupied himself in poetry, philosophy, 
and literature. In 232 he defeated the Per¬ 
sians under Artaxerxes, who wished to drive 
the Romans from Asia. When on an ex¬ 
pedition into Gaul to repress an incursion of 
the Germans, he was murdered with his 
mother in an insurrection of his troops, 
headed by the brutal Maxitnin, who suc¬ 
ceeded him as emperor. 

Alexanders (Smyrnium olusdtrum ), an 
umbelliferous biennial plant, a native of 
Britain, formerly cultivated for its leaf¬ 
stalks. which, having a pleasant aromatic 
flavoui’, were blanched and used instead of 
celery—a vegetable that has taken its place. 

Alexandretta, or Iskanderoon (ancient 
Alexandria ad Issum), a small seaport in 
Asia Minor, on the Gulf of Iskanderoon, the 
port of Aleppo and Northern Syria. Named 



ALEXANDRIA. 


after Alexander the Great, at whose com¬ 
mand it was founded in memory of the battle 
of Issus. Pop. 1500. 

Alexandria, an ancient city and seaport 
in Egypt, at the north-west angle of the 
Nile delta, on a ridge of land between the 
sea and Lake Mareotis. Ancient Alexan¬ 
dria was founded by, and named in honour 
of, Alexander the Great, in B.c. 332, and 
was long a great and splendid city, the 


centre of commerce between the east and 
west, as well as of Greek learning and civi¬ 
lization, with a population at one time of 
perhaps 1,000,000. It was especially cele¬ 
brated for its great library, and also for its 
famous lighthouse, one of the wonders of 
the world, standing upon the little island 
of Pharos, which was connected with the 
city by a mole. Under Roman rule it was 
the second city 'of the empire, and when 



Constantinople became the capital of the 
East it still remained the chief centre of 
trade; but it received a blow from which 
it never recovered when captured by Amru, 
general of Caliph Omar in 641, after a siege 
of fourteen months. Its ruin was finally 
completed by the discovery of the passage to 
India by the Cape of Good Hope, which opened 
up a new route for the Asiatic trade. See 
Alexandrian Library, Alexandrian School. 
—Modern Alexandria stands partly on what 
was formerly the island of Pharos, partly 
on the peninsula which now connects it 
with the mainland and has been formed by 
the accumulation of soil, and partly on the 
mainland. The streets in the Turkish 
quarter are narrow, dirty, and irregular; 
in the foreign quarter they are regular and 
wide, and it is here where the finest houses 


are situated, and where are the principal 
shops and hotels, banks, offices of companies, 
&c.; this part of the city being also supplied 
with gas, and with water brought by the 
Mahmudieh Canal from the western branch 
of the Nile. Alexandria is connected by 
railway with Cairo, Rosetta, and Suez. A 
little to the south of the city are the cata¬ 
combs, which now serve as a quarry. An¬ 
other relic of antiquity is Pompey’s Pillar, 
98 ft. 9 in. high. Alexandria has two ports, 
on the east and west respectively of the 
isthmus of the Pharos peninsula, the latter 
having a breakwater over 3000 yards in 
length, with fine quays and suitable railway 
and other accommodation. The trade of 
Alexandria is large and varied, the exports 
being cotton, beans, pease, rice, wheat, &c.; 
the imports chiefly manufactured goods. At 

92 











ALEXANDRIAN VERSION. 


ALEXANDRIA 

the beginning of the century Alexandria 
was an insignificant place of 5000 or 6000 
inhabitants. The origin of its more recent 
career of prosperity it owes to Mohammed 
Ali. In 1882 the insurrection of Arabi Pasha 
and the massacre of Europeans led to the 
intervention of the British, and the bom¬ 
bardment of the forts by the British Meet 
in July. When the British entered the 
city they found the finest parts of it sacked 
and in flames, but the damage is being re¬ 
paired. Pop. 227,064. 

Alexandria, a town and port of the 
United States, in Virginia, on the right 
bank of the Potomac (which is of sufficient 
depth for large vessels), 7 miles south of 
Washington, with straight and spacious 
streets; carries on a considerable trade, 
chiefly in flour. Pop. in 1890, 14,339. 

Alexandria, a town of Scotland, in Dum¬ 
bartonshire, on the Leven, 4 miles north of 
Dumbarton, with extensive cotton printing 
and bleaching works. Pop. 6173. 

Alexandria, a town of Southern Russia, 
government of Cherson, on a tributary of 
the Dnieper. Pop. 10,521. 

Alexandrian Library, the largest and 
most famous of all the ancient collections of 
books, founded by Ptolemy Soter (died 283 
B.c.), king of Egypt, and greatly enlarged 
by succeeding Ptolemies. At its most 
flourishing period it is said to have num¬ 
bered 700,000 volumes, accommodated in 
two different buildings, one of them being 
the Serapeion, or temple of Jupiter Serapis. 
The other collection was burned during 
Julius Caesar’s siege of the city, but the Ser¬ 
apeion library existed to the time of the 
Emperor Theodosius the Great, when, at 
the general destruction of the heathen tem¬ 
ples, the splendid temple of Jupiter Serapis 
was gutted (a.d. 391) by a fanatical crowd 
of Christians, and its literary treasures de¬ 
stroyed or scattered. A library was again 
accumulated, but was burned by the Arabs 
when they captured the city under the caliph 
Omar in 641. Amru, the captain of the 
caliph’s army, would have been willing to 
spare the library, but Omar is said to have 
disposed of the matter in the famous 
words: ‘If these writings of the Greeks 
agree with the Koran they are useless, and 
need not be preserved; if they disagree they 
are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.’ 

Alexandrian School or Age, the school 
or period of Greek literature and learning 
that existed at Alexandria in Egypt during 
the three hundred years that the rule of 

93 


the Ptolemies lasted (323-30 b.c.), and con¬ 
tinued under the Roman supremacy. Ptol¬ 
emy Soter founded the famous library of 
Alexandria (see above) and his son, Phila- 
delphus, established a kind of academy of 
sciences and arts. Many scholars and men 
of genius were thus attracted to Alexandria, 
and a period of literary activity set in, 
which made Alexandria for long the focus 
and centre of Greek culture and intellectual 
effort. It must be admitted, however, that 
originality was not a characteristic of the 
Alexandrian age, which was stronger in 
criticism, grammar, and science than in pure 
literature. Among the grammarians and 
critics were Zenodotus, Eratosthenes, Aris¬ 
tophanes, Aristarchus, and Zoilus, proverbial 
as a captious critic. Their merit is to have 
collected, edited, and preserved the existing 
monuments of Greek literature. To the 
poets belong Apollonius, Ly cophron, Aratus, 
Nicander, Euphorion, Callimachus, Theo¬ 
critus, Philetas, &c. Among those who pur¬ 
sued mathematics, physics, and astronomy, 
was Euclid, the father of scientific geometry; 
Archimedes, great in physics and mechanics; 
Apollonius of Perga, whose work on conic 
sections still exists; Nicomachus, the first 
scientific arithmetician; and (under the Ro¬ 
mans) the astronomer and geographer Ptol¬ 
emy. Alexandria also was distinguished in 
philosophical speculation, and it was here 
that the New Platonic school was established 
at the close of the second century after 
Christ by Ammonius of Alexandria (about 
193 A.D.), whose disciples were Plotinus and 
Origen. Being for the most part orientals, 
formed by the study of Greek learning, the 
writings of the New Platonists are strikingly 
characterized—for example, those of Am¬ 
monius Saccas, Plotinus, Iamblicus, Por- 
phyrius—by a mixture of Asiatic and Euro¬ 
pean elements. The principal Gnostic sys¬ 
tems also had their origin in Alexandria. 

Alexandrian Version, or Codex Alex- 
andrinus, a manuscript in the British 
Museum, of great importance in Biblical 
criticism, written on parchment with uncial 
letters, and belonging probably to the latter 
half of the sixth century. It contains the 
whole Greek Bible (the Old Testament being- 
according to the Septuagint), together with 
the letters of Bishop Clement of Rome, but 
it wants parts of Matthew, John, and Second 
Corinthians. The Patriarch of Constanti¬ 
nople, who in 1628 sent this manuscript 
as a present to Charles I., said he had re¬ 
ceived it from Egypt (whence its name). 



ALEXANDRINE-ALFORD. 


Alexandrine, in prosody, the name given, 
from an old French poem on Alexander the 
Great, to a species of verse, which consists 
of six iambic feet, or twelve syllables, the 
pause being, in correct Alexandrines, always 
on the sixth syllable; for example, the second 
of the following verses: — 

A needless Alexandrine ends the song, 

Which, like a wounded snake, drags its slow 
length along. 

In English Drayton’s Polyolbion is written 
in this measure, and the concluding line of 
the Spenserian stanza is an Alexandrine. 
The French in their epics and dramas are 
confined to this verse, which for this reason 
is called by them the heroic. 

Alexandro'pol, a Russian town and for¬ 
tress in the Transcaucasian government of 
Erivan, near the highway from Erivan to 
Kars; can accommodate 10,000 military, and 
has silk manufactories. Pop. 17,272. 

Alexan'drov, a town of Russia, govern¬ 
ment of Vladimir, with a famous convent, 
in the church of which are interred two 
sisters of Peter the Great; manufactures of 
steel and cotton goods. In the neighbour¬ 
hood is an imperial stud. Pop. 7179. 

Alex'isbad, a bathing place of Germany, 
Anhalt, in the Harz Mountains, with two 
mineral springs strongly impregnated with 
iron. 

Alex'is Michai'lovitch (son of Michael), 
second Russian czar of the line of Romanof 
(the present dynasty), bom in 1629, suc¬ 
ceeded his father Michael Feodorovitch in 
1645, and died in 1676. He did much for 
the internal administration and for the en¬ 
largement of the empire; reconquered Little 
Russia from Poland, and carried his autho¬ 
rity to the extreme east of Siberia. He was 
father of Peter the Great. 

Alexis Petro'vitch, eldest son of Peter 
the Great, was born in Moscow, 1690, and 
died in 1718. He opposed the innovations 
introduced by his father, who on this account 
disinherited him by a ukase in 1718, and 
when he discovered that Alexis was paving 
the way to succeed to the crown he had his 
son tried and condemned to death. This 
affected the latter so much that he died in a 
few days, leaving a son, afterwards the 
emperor Peter II. 

Alex'ius Comne'nus, Byzantine Emperor, 
was born in 1048, and died in 1118. He 
was a nephew of Isaac the first emperor of 
the Comneni, and attained the throne in 
1081, at a time when the empire was men¬ 


aced from vax*ious sides, especially by the 
Turks and the Normans. From these dan¬ 
gers, as well as from later (caused by the 
first Crusade, the Normans, and the Turks), 
he managed to extricate himself by policy 
or warlike measures, and maintained his 
position till the age of seventy, during a 
reign of thirty-seven years. 

Al'fa, a name for esparto grass or a vari¬ 
ety of it, largely obtained from Algeria. 
See Esparto. 

Alfal'fa, a prolific forage plant similar to 
Lucern, largely grown in California, and in 
parts of Spanish America. Heavy crops 
are gathered three or four times a season. 

Alfara'bi, an eminent Arabian scholar of 
the tenth century; died at Damascus in 950; 
wrote on the Aristotelian philosophy, and 
compiled a kind of encyclopedia. 

Al'fenid, an alloy of nickel plated with 
silver, used for spoons, forks, candlesticks, 
tea services, &c. 

Alfieri (al-fe-a're), Vittorio, Count, 
Italian poet, was born at Asti in 1749, and 
died in 1803. After extensive European 
travels he began to write, and his first play, 
Cleopatra (1775), being received with gene¬ 
ral applause he determined to devote all his 
efforts to attaining a position among writers 
of dramatic poetry. At Florence he became 
intimate with the Countess of Albany, wife 
of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and on 
the death of the prince she lived with him 
as his mistress. This connection he believed 
to have served to stimulate and elevate his 
poetic powers. He died at Florence and 
was buried in the church of Santa Croce, 
between Macchiavelli and Michael Angelo, 
where a beautiful monument by Canova 
covers his remains. . He wrote twenty-one 
tragedies and six comedies. His tragedies 
are full of lofty and patriotic sentiments, 
but the language is stiff and without poetic 
grace, and the plots poor. Nevertheless he 
is considered the first tragic writer of Italy, 
and has served as a model for his successors. 
Alfieri composed also an epic, lyrics, satires, 
and poetical translations from the ancient 
classics. He left an interesting autobio¬ 
graphy. 

Alfon'so. See Alphonso. 

Al'ford, Henry, D.D., Dean of Canter¬ 
bury, an English poet, scholar, and miscel¬ 
laneous writer, was born in London in 1810. 
After attending various schools he entered 
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, gra¬ 
duated B.A. in 1832, was elected fellow 
in 1834, and next year became vicar of 

94 



ALFRED 


ALGAROT. 


Wymeswold, Leicestershire. In 1842 he 
was appointed examiner in logic and moral 
philosophy to the University of London, 
and held the appointment till 1857. He 
early began the great work of his life, his 
edition of the Greek Testament with com¬ 
mentary, which occupied him for twenty 
years, the first volume being published in 
1849, the fourth and last in 1861. In 1853 
he was translated to Quebec Chapel, Lon¬ 
don, and in 1857 he was appointed Dean of 
Canterbury. He died in 1871. Among 
other things he wrote Chapters on the Poets 
of Ancient Greece, Sermons, Psalms and 
Hymns, Homilies on the Acts of the 
Apostles, Letters from Abroad, Poetical 
Works, Plea for the Queen’s English. 

Al'fred (or AEl'fred) the Great, King 
of England, one of the most illustrious rulers 
on record, was born at Wantage, in Berk¬ 
shire, a.d. 849, his father being Ethelwolf, 
son of Egbert, king of the West Saxons. 
He succeeded his brother Ethelred in 872, 
at a time when the Danes, or Northmen, 
had extended their conquests widely over 
the country, and they had completely over¬ 
run the kingdom of the West Saxons by 878. 
Alfred was obliged to flee in disguise, and 
stayed for some time with one of his own 
neat-herds. At length he gathered a small 
force, and having fortified himself on the 
Isle of Athelney, formed by the confluence 
of the rivers Parret and Tone, amid the 
marshes of Somerset, he was able to make 
frequent sallies against the enemy. It was 
during his abode here that he went, if the 
story is true, disguised as a harper into the 
camp of King Guthrum (or Guthorm), and, 
having ascertained that the Danes felt them¬ 
selves secure, hastened back to his troops, led 
them against the enemy, and gained such 
a decided victory that fourteen days after¬ 
wards the Danes begged for peace. This 
battle took place in May, 878, near Eding- 
ton, in Wiltshire. Alfred allowed the Danes 
who were already in the country to remain, 
on condition that they gave hostages, took 
a solemn oath to quit Wessex, and embraced 
Christianity. Their king, Guthrum, was 
baptized, with thirty of his followers, and 
ever afterward remained faithful to Alfred. 
They received that portion of the east of 
England now occupied by the counties of 
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge, as a place 
of residence. The few years of tranquillity 
(886-893) which followed were employed 
by Alfred in rebuilding the towns that had 
suffered most during the war, particularly 

95 


London; in training his people in arms 
and no less in agriculture; in improving 
the navy; in systematizing the laws and 
internal administration; and in literary la¬ 
bours and the advancement of learning. He 
caused many manuscripts to be translated 
from Latin, and himself translated several 
works into Anglo-Saxon, such as the Psalms, 
2Esop’s Fables, Boethius on the Consola¬ 
tion of Philosophy, the History of Orosius, 
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, &c. He also 
drew up several original works in Anglo- 
Saxon. These peaceful labours were inter¬ 
rupted, about 894, by an invasion of the 
Northmen, who, after a struggle of three 
years, were finally driven out. Alfred died 
in 901. He had married, in 868, Alswith 
or Ealhswith, the daughter of a Mercian 
nobleman, and left two sons: Edward, who 
succeeded him, and Ethelwerd, who died 
in 922. Alfred presents us with one of the 
most perfect examples of the able and patri¬ 
otic monarch united with the virtuous man. 

Algse (al'je), a nat. order of cryptogamic 
or thallogenous plants, found for the most 
part in the sea and fresh water, and com¬ 
prising sea-weeds, &c. The higher forms 
have stems bearing leaf-like expansions, 
and they are often attached to the rocl:3 
by roots, which, however, do not derive 
nutriment from the rocks. A stem, how¬ 
ever, is most frequently absent. The plants 
are nourished through their whole surface 
by the medium in which they live. They 
vary in size from the microscopic diatoms 
to forms whose stems resemble those of 
forest trees, and whose fronds rival the 
leaves of the palm. They are entirely 
composed of cellular tissue, and many are 
edible and nutritious, as carrageen or Irish- 
moss, dulse, &c. Kelp, iodine, and bromine 
are products of various species. The Algse 
are also valuable as manure. They are 
often divided into five orders:—Diato- 
maceae, Confervaceae, Fucaceae, Ceramiaceae, 
and Characeae. 

Algar'di, Alessandro, one of the chief 
Italian sculptors of the seventeenth century; 
born 1602, died 1654. He lived and worked 
chiefly at Rome; executed the tomb of Leo 
XI. in St. Peter’s, and a marble relief with 
life-size figures over the altar of St. Leo 
there. 

Algaro'ba-bean. See Carob-trce. 

Algarobill'a, the seed-pods of one or two 
South American trees (genus /Voso^'s)>vari¬ 
able as containing much tannin. 

Al'garot, a violently purgative and erne- 


ALGAROTTI-ALGEBRA. 


tic white powder, precipitated from chloride 
of antimony in water; formerly used in 
medicine. 

Algarot'ti, Francesco, Count, born in 
1712, died in 1764, an Italian writer on 
science, the fine arts, &c. He lived for some 
years in France and for a long time in Ger¬ 
many, Frederick the Great of Prussia hav¬ 
ing made him chamberlain and count. He 
wrote Newtonianism for the Ladies; Essays 
on the Fine Arts; poems, letters, &c. 

Algarve (al-gar'va), a maritime province 
of Portugal occupying the southern portion 
of the kingdom; mountainous but with some 
fertile tracts. Area, 2099 square miles; 
pop. 200,000. 

Algau (al'gou), a name for the south¬ 
western portion of Bavaria and the adjacent 
parts of Wiirtemberg and Tirol, intersected 
by the Algau Alps. The Algau breed of 
cattle is one of the best in Germany. 

Algazzali (al-gaz-a'le), Abu Hamed Mo¬ 
hammed, an Arabian philosopher, Persian 
by birth; born 1058, died 1111. He was 
a most prolific author; an opponent of the 
prevailing Aristotelian philosophy of the 
day, and wrote against it the Destruction 
of the Philosophers, answered by Averroes 
in his Destruction of the Destruction. 

Al'gebra, a kind of generalized arithme¬ 
tic, in which numbers or quantities and 
operations, often also the results of opera¬ 
tions, are represented by symbols. Thus 
the expression xy + cz + dy 2 denotes that a 
number represented by x is to be multiplied 
by a number represented by y, a number c 
multiplied by a number z, a number d by a 
number y multiplied by itself (or squared), 
and the sum taken of these three products. 
So the equation (as it is called) x 2 - lx + 
12 = 0 expi’esses the fact that if a certain 
number x is multiplied by itself, and this 
result made less by seven times the number 
and greater by twelve, the result is 0. In 
this case x must either be 3 or 4 to produce 
the given result; but such an equation (or 
formula) as (a + b){a- b) = a 2 ~.b 2 is always 
true whatever values may be assigned to 
a and b. Algebra is an invaluable instru¬ 
ment in intricate calculations of all kinds, 
and enables operations to be performed and 
results obtained that by arithmetic would 
be impossible, and its scope is still being 
extended. 

The beginnings of algebraic method are 
to be found in Diophantus, a Greek of the 
fourth century of our era, but it was the 
Arabians that introduced algebra to Europe, 


and from them it received its name. The 
first Arabian treatise on algebra was pub¬ 
lished in the reign of the great Kaliph A1 
Mamun (813-833) by Mohammed Ben 
Musa. In 1202 Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, 
who had travelled and studied in the East, 
published a work treating of algebra as then 
understood in the Arabian school. From 
this time to the discovery of printing con¬ 
siderable attention was given to algebra, 
and the work of Ben Musa and another 
Arabian treatise, called the Rule of Algebra, 
were translated into Italian. The first 
printed work treating on algebra (also on 
arithmetic, &c.) appeared at Venice in 
1494, the author being a monk called Luca 
Pacioli da Bergo. Rapid progress now 
began to be made, and among the names 
of those to whom advances are to be at¬ 
tributed are Tartaglia and Cardan. About 
the middle of the sixteenth century the 
German Stifel introduced the signs + , 
V, and Recorde the sign =. Recorde 
wrote the first English work on algebra. 
Fran§ois Vieta, a French mathematician 
(1540-1603), first adopted the method which 
has led to so great an extension of modern 
algebra, by being the first who used general 
symbols for known quantities as well as for 
unknown. It was he also who first made 
the application of algebra to geometry. 
Albert Girard extended the theory of equa¬ 
tions by the supposition of imaginary quan¬ 
tities. The Englishman Harriot, early in 
the seventeenth century, discovered nega¬ 
tive roots, and established the equality be¬ 
tween the number of roots and the units in 
the degree of the equation. He also in¬ 
vented the signs < >, and Oughthred that 
of x. Descartes, though not the first to 
apply algebra to geometry, has, by the 
extent and importance of his applications, 
commonly acquired the credit of being so. 
The same discoveries have also been attri¬ 
buted to him as to Harriot, and their respec¬ 
tive claims have caused much controversy. 
He obtained by means of algebra the defi¬ 
nition and description of curves. Since his 
time algebra has been applied so widely in 
geometry and higher mathematics that we 
need only mention the names of Fermat, 
Wallis, Newton, Leibnitz, De Moivre, Mac- 
Laurin, Taylor, Euler, D’Alembert, La¬ 
grange, Laplace, Fourier, Poisson, Gauss, 
Horner, De Morgan, Sylvester, Cayley. 
Boole, Jevons, and others have applied the 
algebraic method not only to formal logic 
but to political economy. 

96 



ALGECIRAS 


ALGERIA. 


Algeciras (al-^e-the'ras), a seaport of 
Spain, on the west side of the Bay of Gib¬ 
raltar, a well-built town carrying on a brisk 
coasting trade. It was the first conquest of 
the Arabs in Spain (711), and was held by 
them till 1344, when it was taken by Al- 
phonso XI. of Castile after a siege of twenty 
months. Near Algeciras, in July, 1801, the 
English admiral Saumarez defeated the 
combined French and Spanish fleets, after 
having failed in an attack a few days before. 
Pop. 14,230. 

Alge'ria, a French colony in North Africa, 
having on the north the Mediterranean, on 
the east Tunis, on the west Marocco, and 
on the south (where the boundary is ill- 
defined) the Desert of Sahara; area, 122,878 
sq. miles, or including the Algerian Sa¬ 
hara 257,000. The country is divided into 
three departments — Algiers, Oran, and 
Constantine. The coast - line is about 
550 miles in length, steep and rocky, and 
though the indentations are numerous the 
harbours are much exposed to the north 
wind. The country is traversed by the 
Atlas Mountains, two chains of which—the 
Great Atlas, bordering on the Sahara, and 
the Little, or Maritime Atlas, between it 
and the sea—run parallel to the coast, the 
former attaining a height of 7000 feet. 
The intervals are filled with lower ranges, 
and numerous transverse ranges connect 
the principal ones and run from them to the 
coast, forming elevated table-lands and in¬ 
closed valleys. The rivers are numerous, 
but many of them are mere torrents rising 
in the mountains near the coast. The Shelif 
is much the largest. Some of the rivers 
are largely used for irrigation, and artesian 
wells have been sunk in some places for the 
same purpose. There are, both on the coast 
and in the interior, extensive salt lakes or 
marshes ( Shotts ), which dry up to a great 
extent in summer. The country bordering 
on the coast, called the Tell, is generally 
hilly, with fertile valleys; in some places a 
flat and fertile plain extends between the 
hills and the sea. In the east there are 
Shotts that sink below the sea-level, and into 
these it has been proposed to introduce the 
waters of the Mediterranean. The climate 
varies considerably according to elevation 
and local peculiarities. There are three 
seasons: winter from November to Febru¬ 
ary, spring from March to June, and sum¬ 
mer from July to October. The summer is 
very hot and dry. In many parts of the 
coast the temperature is moderate and the 
VOL. I. 97 


climate so healthy that Algeria is now a 
winter resort for invalids. 

The chief products of cultivation are 
wheat, barley, and oats, tobacco, cotton, 
wine, silk, and dates. Early vegetables, 
especially potatoes and pease, are exported 
to France and England. A fibre called alfa, 
a variety of esparto, which grows wild on 
the high plateaux, is exported in large quan¬ 
tities. Cork is also exported. There are 
valuable forests, in which grow various sorts 
of pines and oaks, ash, cedar, myrtle, pis¬ 
tachio-nut, mastic, carob, &c. The Aus¬ 
tralian Eucalyptus globulus (a gum-tree) 
has been successfully introduced. Agricul¬ 
ture often suffers much from the ravages 
of locusts. Among wild animals are the 
lion, panther, hyaena, and jackal; the do¬ 
mestic quadrupeds include the horse, the 
mule, cattle, sheep, and pigs (introduced by 
the French). Algeria possesses valuable 
minerals, including iron, copper, lead, sul¬ 
phur, zinc, antimony, marble (white and 
red), and lithographic stone. 

The trade of Algeria has greatly increased 
under French rule, France, Spain, and Eng¬ 
land being the countries with which it is 
principally carried on, and three-fourths of 
the whole being with France. The exports 
(besides those mentioned above) are olive- 
oil, raw hides, wood, wool, tobacco, oran¬ 
ges, &c.; the imports, manufactured goods, 
wines, spirits, coffee, &c. The manufactur¬ 
ing industries are unimportant, and include 
morocco leather, carpets, muslins, and silks. 
French money, weights, and measures are 
generally used. The chief towns are Al¬ 
giers, Oran, Constantine, Bona, and Tlem- 
cen. There are about 1300 miles of railways 
opened; there is also a considerable net¬ 
work of telegraph lines. 

The two principal native races inhabiting 
Algeria are Arabs and Berbers. The former 
are mostly nomads, dwelling in tents and 
wandering from place to place, though a 
large number of them are settled in the Tell, 
where they carry on agriculture and have 
formed numerous villages. The Berbers, 
here called Kabyles, are the original in¬ 
habitants of the territory and still form a 
considerable part of the population. They 
speak the Berber language, but use Arabic 
characters in writing. The Jews form a 
small but influential part of the population. 
Various other races also exist. Except the 
Jews all the natives races are Moham¬ 
medans. There are now a considerable 
number of French and other colonists, pro- 

7 



ALGERIA. 


vision being made for granting them con¬ 
cessions of land on certain conditions. There 
are over 260,000 colonists of French origin 
in Algeria, and over 200,000 colonists na¬ 
tives of other European countries (chiefly 
Spaniards and Italians). Algeria is gov¬ 
erned by a governor-general, who is assisted 
by a council appointed by the French govern¬ 
ment. The settled portion of the country, in 
the three departments of Algiers, Constan¬ 
tine, and Oran, is treated much as if it were 
a part of France, and each department sends 
two deputies and one senator to the French 
chambers. The rest of the territory is under 
military rule. The colony costs France a 
considerable sum every year. Pop. (1891) 
of civil ter. 3,636,967; of mil. ter. 487,765; 
total, 4,124,732. 

The country now called Algeria was 
known to the Romans as Numidia. It 
flourished greatly under their rule, and 
early received the Christian religion. It 
was conquered by the Vandals in 430-431 
A.D., and recovered by Belisarius for the 
Byzantine Empire in 533-534. About the- 
middle of the seventh century it was over¬ 
run by the Saracens. The town of Algiers 
was founded about 935 by Yussef Ibn 
Zeiri, and the country was subsequently 
ruled by his successors and the dynasties of 
the Almoravides and Almohades. After 
the overthrow of the latter, about 1269, it 
broke up into a number of small indepen¬ 
dent territories. The Moors and Jews who 
were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and 
Isabella at the end of the fifteenth century 
settled in large numbers in Algeria, and 
revenged themselves on their persecutors 
by the practice of piracy. On this account 
various expeditions were made by Spain 
against Algeria, and by 1510 the greater 
part of the country was made tributary. 
A few years later the Algerians invited to 
their assistance the Turkish pirate Horush 
(or Haruj) Barbarossa, who made himself 
Sultan of Algiers in 1516, but was not long 
in being taken by the Spaniards and be¬ 
headed. His brother and successor put 
Algiers under the protection of Turkey 
(about 1520), and organized the system of 
piracy which was long the terror of Euro¬ 
pean commerce, and was never wholly sup¬ 
pressed till the French occupation. Hence¬ 
forth the country belonged to the Turkish 
empire, though from 1710 the connection 
was little more than nominal. The depre¬ 
dations of the Algerian pirates were a con¬ 
tinual source of irritation to the Christian 


powers, who sent a long series of expedi¬ 
tions against them. For instance in 1816 
a United States fleet defeated an Alge¬ 
rian one and forced the dey to agree to a 
peace in which he recognized the American 
flag as inviolable. In 1816 Lord Exmouth 
with an English fleet bombarded Algiers, 
and exacted a treaty by which all the Chris¬ 
tian slaves were at once released, and the 
dey undertook for the future to treat all 
his prisoners of war as the European law of 
nations demanded. But the piratical prac¬ 
tices of the Algerians were soon renewed. 

At last the French determined on more 
vigorous measures, and in 1830 sent a force 
of over 40,000 men against the country. 
Algiers was speedily occupied, the dey re¬ 
tired, and the country was without a gov¬ 
ernment, but resistance was organized by 
Abd - el - Kader, an Arab chief whom the 
emergency had raised up. He began his 
warlike career of fifteen years by an attack 
on Oran in 1832, and after an obstinate 
struggle the French, in February, 1834, 
consented to a peace, acknowledging him 
as ruling over all the Arab tribes west of 
the Shelif by the title of Emir of Maskara. 
War was soon again renewed with varying 
fortune, and in 1837, in order to have their 
hands free in attacking Constantine, the 
French made peace with Abd - el - Kader, 
leaving to him the whole of Western Al¬ 
geria except some coast towns. Constan¬ 
tine was now taken, and the subjugation 
of the province of Constantine followed. 
Meanwhile Abd-el-Kader was preparing 
for another conflict, and in November, 1838, 
he suddenly broke into French territory 
with a strong force, and for a time the 
supremacy of the French was endangered. 
Matters took a more favourable turn for 
them when General Bugeaud was appointed 
governor-general in February, 1841. In the 
autumn of 1841 Saida, the last fortress of 
Abd-el-Kader, fell into his hands, after 
which the only region that held out against 
the French was that bordering on Marocco. 
Early in the following year this also was 
conquered, and Abd-el-Kader found himself 
compelled to seek refuge in the adjoin¬ 
ing empire. From Marocco Abd-el-Kader 
twice made a descent upon Algeria, on the 
second occasion defeating the French in two 
battles; and in 1844 he even succeeded in 
raising an army in Marocco to withstand 
the French. Bugeaud, however, crossed 
the frontier, and inflicted a severe defeat 
on this army, while a French fleet bom- 

9 $ 



ALGESIRAS-ALGOMA. 


barded the towns on the coast. The Em¬ 
peror of Marocco was at length compelled 
to agree to a treaty, in which he not only 
promised to refuse Abd-el-Kader his assist¬ 
ance, but even engaged to lend his assist¬ 
ance against him. Reduced to extremities 
Abd-el-Kader surrendered on 27th Decem¬ 
ber, 1847, and was at first taken to France 
a prisoner, but was afterwards released on 
his promise not to return to Algeria. The 
country was yet far from subdued, and the 
numerous risings that successively took place 


rendered Algeria a school for French gene* 
rals, such as Pelissier, Canrobert, St. Arnaud, 
and Macmahon. In 1864 Macmahon suc¬ 
ceeded Pelissier as governor-general. About 
this time the emperor Napoleon III., who 
had visited the colony, introduced consider¬ 
able modifications into the government. 
Fresh disturbances broke out in the south 
nearly every year till 1871, when, during 
the Franco-Germ an war, a great effort was 
made to throw off the French yoke. It 
was, however, completely suppressed, and 



Principal Mosque, Algiers. 


in order to remove what was believed to be 
one principal cause of the frequent insur¬ 
rections a civil government was established 
instead of the military government in the 
northern parts of the colony. The southern 
parts, inhabited by nomadic tribes, are still 
subject to military rule. 

Algesi'ras. See Algeciras. 

Alghero, or Algheri (al-ga'ro, al-ga're), 
a fortified town and seaport on the north¬ 
west coast of the island of Sardinia, 15 miles 
south-west of Sassari; the seat of a bishop, 
with a handsome cathedral. Pop. 8092. 

Algiers (al'jerz), a city and seaport on the 
Mediterranean, capital of Algeria, on the 
Pay of Algiers, partly on the slope of a hill 
facing the sea. The old town, which is 
the higher, is oriental in appearance, with 
narrow, crooked streets, and houses that are 
strong, prison-like edifices. The modern 
French town, which occupies the lower slope 
and spreads along the shore, is handsomely 
built, with broad streets and elegant squares. 
It contains the government buildings, the 

99 


central military and civil establishments, 
the barracks, the residence of the governor- 
general and the officials of the general and 
provincial government, the superior courts 
of justice, the archbishop’s palace and the 
cathedral, an English church and library, 
the great commercial establishments, &c. 
A fine boulevard built on a series of arches, 
and bordered on one side by handsome build¬ 
ings, runs along the sea front of the town 
overlooking the bay, harbour, and shipping. 
Forty feet below are the quay and railway- 
station, reached by inclined roads leading 
from the centre of the boulevard. The har¬ 
bour is good and capacious, and it and the 
city are defended by a strong series of for¬ 
tifications. There is a large shipping trade 
carried on. The climate of Algiers, though 
extremely variable, makes it a very desir¬ 
able winter residence for invalids and others 
from colder regions. Though warm, it is 
bracing and tonic, and not of a relaxing 
character. There is a considerable rainfall 
(average 29 in.), but the dry air and absorb- 


































ALGIN 


ALHAMBRA. 


ent soil prevent it from being disagreeable. 
The winter months resemble a bright, sunny 
English autumn, while the heat of summer 
is not so intense as that of Egypt. The 
sirocco or desert wind is troublesome, how¬ 
ever, during summer, but in the winter it is 
merely a pleasant, warm, dry breeze. Hail¬ 
storms are not unfrequent, but frost and 
snow in Algiers are so rare as to be almost 
unknown. Pop. 74,792. 

Algin, a viscous, gummy substance ob¬ 
tained from certain sea-weeds, more espe¬ 
cially those of the genus Laminaria. It 
can be utilized for all purposes where starch 
or gum is now 
required; may be 
used in cookery 
for soups and jel¬ 
lies; and in an in¬ 
soluble form it can 
be cut, turned, 
and polished, like 
horn or vulcanite. 

Algo'a Bay, a 
bay on the south 
coast of Cape Co¬ 
lony, 425 miles 
east from the Cape 
of Good Hope, the 
only place of shel¬ 
ter on this coast 
for vessels during 
the prevailing north-west gales. The usual 
anchorage is off Port Elizabeth, on its west 
coast, now a place of large and increasing 
trade. 

Algol', a star in the constellation Perseus 
(head of Medusa), remarkable as a variable 
star, changing in brightness from the second 
to the fifth magnitude. 

Algo'ma, a district of Canada, on the north 
side of Lake Superior, forming the north¬ 
west portion of Ontario, rich in silver, cop¬ 
per, iron, &c. 

Algon'kins, a family of North American 
Indians, formerly spread over a great ex¬ 
tent of territory, and still forming a large 
proportion of the Indians of Canada. They 
consisted of four groups, namely—(1) the 
eastern group, comprising the Massachu¬ 
setts, Narragansets, Mohicans, Delawares, 
and other tribes; (2) the north - eastern 
group, consisting of the Abenakis, &c.; (3) 
the western group, made up of the Shaw- 
nees, Miamis, Illinois, &c.; and (4) the north¬ 
western group, including the Chippewas or 
Ojibbewas, the largest of all the tribes. 

Alguacil, Alguazil (al-gwa-thel'), in 


Spain, an officer whose business it is to 
execute the decrees of a judge; a sort of 
constable. 

Algum. See Almug. 

Alha'gi. See Camel’ s-thorn. 

Alhama (a-la'ma; that is, ‘the bath’), a 
town of Southern Spain, province of Gra¬ 
nada, on the Motril, 25 miles south-west of 
Granada, celebrated for its warm medicinal 
(sulphur) baths and drinking waters. It 
formed a Moorish fortress, the recovery of 
which in 1482 by the Spaniards led to the 
entire conquest of Granada. It was thrown 
into ruins by an earthquake in Dec. 1884. 

Pop. 8000. — 
There is also an 
Alhama in the 
province of Mur¬ 
cia, with a warm 
mineral spring. 
Pop. 6000. 

Alham'bra 
(Arabic, Keldt-al- 
hamrah , ‘the red 
castle’), a famous 
group of buildings 
in Spain, forming 
the citadel of 
Granada when 
that city was one 
of the principal 
seats of the em¬ 
pire of the Moors in Spain, situated on a 
height, surrounded by a wall flanked by 
many towers, and having a circuit of 2£ 
miles. Within the circuit of the walls are 
two churches, a number of mean houses, and 
some straggling gardens, besides the palace 
of Charles V and the celebrated Moorish 
palace which is often distinctively spoken of 
as the Alhambra. This building, to which the 
celebrity of the site is entirely due, was the 
royal palace of the kings of Granada. The 
greater part of the present building belongs 
to the first half of the 14th century. It 
consists mainly of buildings surrounding two 
oblong courts, the one called the Court of the 
Fishpond (or of the Myrtles), 138 by 74 feet, 
lying north and south; the other, called the 
Court of the Lions, from a fountain orna¬ 
mented with twelve lions in marble, 115 by 
66 feet, lying east and west, described as 
being, with the apartments that surround 
it, ‘the gem of Arabian art in Spain, its 
most beautiful and most perfect example.’ 
Its design is elaborate, exhibiting a profu¬ 
sion of exquisite detail gorgeous in colour¬ 
ing, but the smallness of its size deprives it 

100 



Alhambra—Moorish Ornament. 




































ALIBI. 


ALHAURIN 


of the element of majesty. The peristyle 
or portico on each side is supported by 128 
pillars of white marble, 11 feet high, some¬ 
times placed singly and sometimes in groups. 
Two pavilions project into the court at each 
end, the domed roof of one having been 
lately restored. Some of the finest cham¬ 
bers of the Alhambra open into this court, 
and near the entrance a museum of Moorish 
remains has been formed. The prevalence 
of stucco or plaster ornamentation is one of 
the features of the Alhambra, which be¬ 
comes especially remarkable in the beauti¬ 
ful honey-combstalactital pendentives which 
the ceilings exhibit. Arabesques and geo¬ 
metrical designs with interwoven inscrip¬ 
tions are present in the richest profusion. 
See Owen Jones’s work on the Alhambra 
(two vols. London, 1842-45). 

Alhaurin (al-ou-ren'), a town of Southern 
Spain, province of Malaga, with sulphure¬ 
ous baths. Pop. 7000. 

Ali (ale), cousin and son-in-law of Mo¬ 
hammed, the first of his converts, and the 
bravest and most faithful of his adherents, 
born a.d. 602. He married Fatima, the 
daughter of the prophet, but after the death 
of Mohammed (632) his claims to the cali¬ 
phate were set aside in favour successively 
of Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman. On the 
assassination of Othman, in a.d. 656, he be¬ 
came caliph, and after a series of struggles 
with his opponents, including Ayesha, widow 
of Mohammed, finally lost his life by assas¬ 
sination at Kufa in 661. A Mohammedan 
schism arose after his death, and has pro¬ 
duced two sects. One sect, called the 
Shiites, put Ali on a level with Mohammed, 
and do not acknowledge the three caliphs 
who preceded Ali. They are regarded as 
heretics by the other sect, called Sunnites. 
The Maxims and Hymns of Ali are yet 
extant. See CaU/ph. 

Ali, Pasha of Yantna, generally called 
Ali Pasha, a bold and able, but ferocious 
and unscrupulous Albanian, born in 1741, 
son of an Albanian chief, who was deprived 
of his territories by rapacious neighbours. 
Ali by his enterprise and success, and by 
his entire want of scruple, got possession of 
more than his father had lost, and made 
himself master of a large part of Albania, 
including Yanina, which the Porte sanc¬ 
tioned his holding, with the title of pasha. 
He now as a ruler displayed excellent quali¬ 
ties, putting an end to brigandage and 
anarchy, making roads, and encouraging 
commerce, He still farther extended his 

101 


sway by subduing the brave Suliotes of 
Epirus, whom he conquered in 1803, after 
a three years’ war. He had long been aim¬ 
ing at independent sovereignty, and had 
intrigued alternately with England, France, 
and Russia. Latterly he was almost inde¬ 
pendent of the Porte, which at length de¬ 
termined to put an end to his power; and 
in 1820 Sultan Mahmoud pronounced his 
deposition. Ali resisted several pashas who 
were sent to carry out this decision, only 
surrendering at last in 1822, on receiving 
assurances that his life and property should 
be granted him. Faith was not kept with 
him, however; he was killed, and his head 
was cut off and conveyed to Constantinople, 
while his treasures were seized by the Porte. 

Al'ias (Latin, ‘on anotheroccasion,’ ‘other¬ 
wise ’), a word often used in judicial proceed¬ 
ings in connection with the different names 
that persons have assumed, most likely for 
prudential reasons at different times, and in 
order to conceal identity, as Joseph Smith 
alias Thomas Jones. 

Alias'ka, the south-western peninsula of 
Alaska Territory, N. America. 

Alibert (a-le-bar), Jean Louis Baron, 
a distinguished French physician, born 1766, 
died 1837, wrote many valuable works on 
medical subjects. 

Ali Bey, a ruler of Egypt, born in the 
Caucasus in 1728, was taken to Cairo and 
sold as a slave, but having entered the force 
of the Mamelukes, and attained the first 
dignity among them, he succeeded in mak¬ 
ing himself virtual governor of Egypt. He 
now refused the customary tribute to the 
Porte, and coined money in his own name. 
In 1769 he took advantage of a war in 
which the Porte was then engaged with 
Russia, to endeavour to add Syria and Pal¬ 
estine to his Egyptian dominion, and in this 
he had almost succeeded, when the defec¬ 
tion of his own adopted son Mohammed 
Bey drove him from Egypt. Joining his 
ally Sheikh Daher in Syria, he still pur¬ 
sued his plans of conquest with remarkable 
success, till in 1773 he was induced to make 
the attempt to recover Egypt with insuffi¬ 
cient means. In a battle near Cairo his 
army was completely defeated and he him¬ 
self taken prisoner, dying a few days after¬ 
wards either of his wounds or by poison. 

Al'ibi (L., ‘elsewhere’), a defence in crimi¬ 
nal procedure, by which the accused endea¬ 
vours to prove that when the alleged crime 
was committed he was present in a different 
place, 



ALICANTE 


ALIEN. 


Alicante (a-le-kan'ta), a fortified town 
and Mediterranean seaport in Spain, capital 
of the province of the same name, pictu¬ 
resquely situated partly on the slope of a 
hill, partly on the plain at the foot, about 
80 miles south by west of Valencia. The 
lower town has wide and well-built streets; 
the upper town is old and irregularly built. 
The principal manufactures are cotton, linen, 
and cigars, one cigar manufactory employ¬ 
ing above 3000 women. The chief export 
is wine, which largely goes to England. 
Alicante is an ancient town. In 718 it was 
taken by the Moors, from whom it was 
wrested about 1240. In modern times it 
has been several times besieged and bom¬ 
barded, as by the French in 1709 and in 
1812, and by the people of Cartagena dur¬ 
ing the commotions of 1873. Pop. 35,479. 
—The province is very fruitful and well 
cultivated, producing wine, silk, fruits, &c. 
The wine is of a dark colour (hence called 
vino tinto, deep-coloured wine), and is heavy 
and sweet. Area, 2098 sq. miles. Pop. 
427,818. 

Alicata, or Licata (a-le-ka'ta, le-ka'ta), 
the most important commercial town on the 
s. coast of Sicily, at the mouth of the Salso, 
24 miles e.s.e. of Girgenti, with a consider¬ 
able trade in sulphur, grain, wine, oil, nuts, 
almonds, and soda. It occupies the site of 
the town which the Tyrant Phintias of 
Acragas erected and named after himself, 
when Gela was destroyed in 280. Pop. 
15,906. 

Alice Maud Mary, Princess, second 
daughter of Queen Victoria, Duchess of 
Saxony, and Grand-duchess of Hesse-Darm- 
stadt, born 1843, died 1878. In 1862 she 
married Frederick William Louis of Hesse, 
nephew of the grand-dnke, whom he suc¬ 
ceeded in 1877. She showed exemplary 
devotion to her father Prince Albert during 
his fatal illness and to the Prince of Wales 
during his attack of fever in 1871. During 
the Franco-German war she did noble nurs¬ 
ing service to both French and Germans. 
She died from diphtheria caught while 
nursing her husband and children. 

Alien, in relation to any country, a per¬ 
son born out of the jurisdiction of the coun¬ 
try, and not having acquired the full rights 
of a citizen of it. The position of aliens 
depends upon the laws of the respective 
countries, but generally speaking aliens owe 
a local allegiance, and are bound equally 
with natives to obey all general rules for 
the preservation of order which do not re¬ 


late specially to citizens. Aliens have been 
often treated with great harshness by the 
laws of some states. Thus in France there 
long existed what was knowm as the droit 
d'aubaine , a law which claimed for the 
benefit of the state the effects of deceased 
foreigners leaving no heirs who were natives. 
Aliens have been repeatedly the objects of 
legislation in Britain, and the tendency at 
the present day is to communicate some of 
the rights of citizenship to aliens, and to 
widen the definition of subjects. According 
to the act of 1870 that now regulates the 
matter, real and personal property of every 
description may be acquired, held, and dis¬ 
posed of by an alien, in the same manner in 
all respects as by a natural-born British 
subject. No other right or privilege (such 
as the right to hold any office or any muni¬ 
cipal, parliamentary, or other franchise) is 
by this act conferred on an alien except 
such as are expressly given in respect of 
property. Previously aliens could hold only 
personal property; they were incompetent 
to hold landed property, except under cer¬ 
tain conditions of residence or business oc¬ 
cupancy for a term of years not exceeding 
twenty-one. The children of aliens born 
in Britain are natural-born subjects. For¬ 
merly the only mode of naturalization was 
by act of parliament; but now an alien 
resident in the United Kingdom for not 
less than five years, or who has been in the 
service of the crown for not less than five 
years, and intends to reside in the kingdom, 
or to serve the British crown, may apply to 
the secretary of state for a certificate of 
naturalization, and on giving evidence of 
particulars may obtain it, being thereby 
entitled to all the political and other rights 
of a natural-born British subject. It used 
to be a principle in English law, that a 
natural-born subject could not divest him¬ 
self of his allegiance by becoming natu¬ 
ralized in a foreign state; but it is now laid 
down that a British subject who has volun¬ 
tarily become naturalized in a foreign state 
thereby ceases to be a British subject. Any 
British subject who has become an alien 
may apply for a certificate of readmission 
to British nationality, on the same terms as 
those provided for aliens in general. In 
the United States the position of aliens 
as regards acquisition and holding of real 
property differs somewhat in the different 
states, though in recent times the disabili¬ 
ties of aliens have been removed in most 
of them. Personal property thev can take, 

102 - 



AL1GANJ 


ALIMENT. 


hold, and dispose of like native citizens. 
Individual states have no jurisdiction on 
the subject of naturalization, though they 
may pass laws admitting aliens to any pri¬ 
vilege short of citizenship. A naturalized 
citizen is not eligible to election as president 
or vice-president of the United States, and 
cannot serve as senator until after nine 
yeai’s’ citizenship, nor as a member of the 
house of representatives until after seven 
years’ citizenship. Five years’ residence in 
the United States and one year's permanent 
residence in the particular state where the 
application is made are necessary for the 
attainment of citizenship. 

Aliganj (a-le-ganj'), a town of Bengal, 
54 miles from Dinapur, noted for its pottery. 
It has a trade in grain, indigo-seed, and 
cotton, and contains two mosques, and a 
large mud fort. Pop. 7436. 

Aligarh (a-le-gar'), a fort and town in In¬ 
dia, in the North-west Provinces, on the East 
Indian railway, 84 miles south-east of Delhi. 
The town, properly called Koel or Coel, is 
distant about 2 miles from the fort, and is 
connected with it by a beautiful avenue. 
It is handsome and well situated, and has 
a trade in cotton, &c. The fort, which had 
been skilfully strengthened by French engi¬ 
neers in the service of the Mahrattas, was 
taken by storm after a desperate resistance 
in 1803 by the British forces under Lord 
Lake, when the whole district was added 
to the British possessions. Pop. 61,730. 
The district has an area of 1954 square 
miles, and a pop. of 1,021,187. 

Alignment (a-lln'ment), a military term, 
signifying the act of adjusting to a straight 
line or in regular straight lines, or the state 
of being so adjusted. 

Aliment, food, a term which includes 
everything, solid or liquid, serving as nutri¬ 
ment for the bodily system. Aliments are 
of the most diverse character, but all of 
them must contain nutritious matter of 
some kind, which, being extracted by the 
act of digestion, enters the blood, and effects 
by assimilation the repair of the body. 
Alimentary matter, therefore, must be simi¬ 
lar to animal substance, or transmutable 
into such. All alimentary substances must, 
therefore, be composed in a greater or less 
degree of soluble parts, which easily lose 
their peculiar qualities in the process of 
digestion, and correspond to the elements 
of the body. The food of animals consists 
for the most part of substances containing 
little oxygen and exhibiting a high degree 

103 


of chemical combination, in which respects 
they differ from most substances that serve 
as sustenance for plants, which are generally 
highly oxidized and exhibit little chemical 
combination. According to the nature of 
their constituents most of the aliments of 
animals are divided into nitrogenous (con¬ 
sisting of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen 
along with nitrogen, and also of sulphur 
and phosphorus) and non-nitrogenous (con¬ 
sisting of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen 
without nitrogen). Water and salts are 
usually considered as forming a third group, 
and, in the widest sense of the word ali¬ 
ment, oxygen alone, which enters the blood 
in the lungs, forms a fourth. The articles 
used as food by man do not consist entirely 
of nutritious substances, but with few ex¬ 
ceptions are compounds of various nutritious 
with indigestible and accordingly innutri- 
tious substances. The only nitrogenous ali¬ 
ments are albuminous substances, and these 
are contained largely in animal food (flesh, 
eggs, milk, cheese). The principal non-ni¬ 
trogenous substance obtained as food from 
animals is fat. Sugar is so obtained in 
smaller quantities (in milk). While some 
vegetable substances also contain much 
albumen, very many of them are rich in 
starch. Among vegetable substances the 
richest in albumen are the legumes (peas, 
beans, and lentils), and following them 
come the cereals (wheat, oats, &c.). Sugar, 
water, and salts may pass without any 
change into the circulatory system; but al¬ 
buminous substances cannot do so without 
being first rendered soluble and capable of 
absorption (in the stomach and intestines); 
starch must be converted into sugar and fat 
emulsified (chiefly by the action of the pan¬ 
creatic juice). One of the objects of cook¬ 
ing is to make our food more susceptible of 
the operation of the digestive fluids. 

The relative importance of the various 
nutritious substances that are taken into 
the system and enter the blood depends 
upon their chemical constitution. The albu¬ 
minous substances are the most indispen¬ 
sable, inasmuch as they form the material 
by winch the constant waste of the body 
is repaired, whence they are called by Lie¬ 
big the substance-formers. But a part of 
the operation of albuminous nutriments may 
be performed equally well, and at less cost, 
by non-nitrogenous substances, that part 
being the maintenance of the temperature 
of the body. As is well known, the tem¬ 
perature of warm-blooded animals is con- 



ALIMENTARY CANAL 


siderably higher than the ordinary tempera¬ 
ture of the surrounding air, in man about 
98° Fahr., and the uniformity of this tem¬ 
perature is maintained by the heat which 
is set free by the chemical processes (of oxi¬ 
dation) which go on within the body. Now 
these processes take place as well with non- 
nitrogenous as with nitrogenous substances. 
The former are even preferable to the latter 
for the keeping up of these processes; by 
oxidation they yield larger quantities of heat 
with less labour to the body, and they are 
hence called the heat-givers. The best 
heat-giver is fat. Albuminous matters are 
not only the tissue-formers of the body; 
they also supply the vehicfe for the oxygen, 
inasmuch as it is of such matters that the 
blood corpuscles are formed. The more red 
blood corpuscles an animal possesses, the more 
oxygen can it take into its system, and the 
more easily and rapidly can it carry on the 
process of oxidation and develop heat. Now 
only a part of the heat so developed passes 
away into the environment of the animal; 
another part is transformed within the body 
(in the muscles) into mechanical work. 
Hence it follows that the non-nitrogenous 
articles of food produce not merely heat but 
also work, but only with the assistance of 
albuminous matters, which, on the one hand, 
compose the working machine, and, on the 
other hand, convey the oxygen necessary 
for oxidation. 

The wholesome or unwholesome character 
of any aliment depends, in a great measure, 
on the state of the digestive organs in any 
given case, as also on the method in which 
it is cooked. Very often a simple aliment 
is made indigestible by artificial cookery. 
In any given case the digestive power of 
the individual is to be considered in order 
to determine whether a particular aliment 
is wholesome or not. In general, therefore, 
we can only say that that aliment is healthy 
which is easily soluble, and is suited to the 
power of digestion of the individual. Man 
is fitted to derive nourishment both from 
animal and vegetable aliment, but can live 
exclusively on either. The nations of the 
North incline generally more to animal ali¬ 
ments ; those of the South, and the orien¬ 
tals, more to vegetable. The inhabitants 
of the most northern regions live almost 
entirely upon animal food, and very largely 
on fat on account of its heat-giving pro¬ 
perty. See Dietetics , Digestion, Adultera¬ 
tion, &c. 

Alimentary Canal, a common name given 


ALISON. 

to the oesophagus, stomach, and intestines of 
animals. See (Esophagus, Intestine, Stomach. 

Al'imony, in law, the allowance to which 
a woman is entitled while a matrimonial 
suit is pending between her and her hus¬ 
band, or after a legal separation from her 
husband, not occasioned by adultery or 
elopement on her part. 

Al iquot Part is such part of a number as 
will divide and measure it exactly without 
any remainder. For instance, 2 is an ali¬ 
quot part of 4, 3 of 12, and 4 of 20. 

Alisma'cese, the water - plantain family, 
a natural order of endogenous plants, the 
members of which are herbaceous, annual 
or perennial; with petiolate leaves sheath¬ 
ing at the base, hermaphrodite (rarely uni¬ 
sexual) flowers, disposed in spikes, panicles, 
or racemes. They are floating or marsh 
plants, and many have edible fleshy rhi¬ 
zomes. They are found in all countries, 
but especially in Europe and North Ame¬ 
rica, where their rather brilliant flowers 
adorn the pools and streams. The principal 
genera are Alisma (water-plaintain) and 
Sagittaria (arrow-head). 

Al ison, Rev. Archibald, a theologian 
and writer on aesthetics, born at Edinburgh 
in 1757; died there in 1839. He studied 
at Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, 
entered the English Church, and finally 
(1800) settled as the minister of an Episco¬ 
pal chapel at Edinburgh. He published 
two volumes of sermons, and a work entitled 
Essays on the Nature and Principles of 
Taste (1790), in which he maintains that 
all the beauty of material objects depends 
upon the associations connected with them. 

Al'ison, Sir Archibald, lawyer and writer 
of history, son of the above, was born in 
Shropshire in 1792, and died in 1867, near 
Glasgow. He was educated at the Univer¬ 
sity of Edinburgh, and in 1814 was admitted 
to the Scottish bar. He spent the next eight 
years in continental travel. On his return 
he was appointed advocate-depute, which 
post he held till 1830. In 1832 he pub¬ 
lished Principles of the Criminal Law of 
Scotland, and in 1833 The Practice of the 
Criminal Law. He was appointed sheriff 
of Lanarkshire in 1834, and retained this 
post till his death. He was made a baronet 
in 1852. His chief work—The History of 
Europe, from 1789 to 1815—was first issued 
in ten vols. 1833-42, the narrative being 
subsequently brought down to 1852, the 
beginning of the second French Empire. 
This work displays industry and research, 

104 



ALIWAL — 

and is generally accurate, but not very 
readable. Its popularity, however, has 
been immense, and it has been translated 
into French, German, Arabic, Hindustani, 
&c. Among Sir Archibald’s other produc¬ 
tions are Principles of Population; Free- 
trade and Protection ; England in 1815 and 
1845; Life of the Duke of Marlborough, 
&c. 

His son, Lieut.-general Sir Archibald 
Alison, born in 1826, entered the army in 
1846, and served in the Crimea, in India 
during the mutiny, and in the Ashantee 
expedition of 1873-4. In Egypt, in 1882, 
he led the Highland Brigade at the battle 
of Tel-el-Kebir, and afterwards was left in 
command of the British army of occupation, 
returning home with honours in 1883. 

Aliwal', a village of Hindustan in the 
Punjab, on the left bank of the Satlej, cele¬ 
brated from the battle fought in its vicinity, 
January 28, 1846, between the Sikhs and 
a British army commanded by Sir Harry 
Smith, resulting in the total defeat of the 
Sikhs. 

Aliz'arine, a substance contained in the 
madder root, and largely used in dyeing 
reds of various shades. Formerly madder 
root was largely employed as a dye-stuff, 
its capability of dyeing being chiefly due to 
the presence in it of alizarine; but the use 
of the root has been almost superseded by 
the employment of alizarine itself, prepared 
artificially from one of the constituents of 
coal-tar. It forms yellowish-red prismatic 
crystals, nearly insoluble in cold, but dis¬ 
solved to a small extent by boiling water, 
and readily soluble in alcohol and ether. 
It possesses exceedingly strong tinctorial 
powers. 

Al'kahest, the pretended universal solvent 
or menstruum of the alchemists. 

Al'kali (from Ar. al-qali, the ashes of 
the plant from which soda was first obtained, 
or the plant itself), a term first used to desig¬ 
nate the soluble part of the ashes of plants, 
especially of sea-weed. Now the term is ap¬ 
plied to various classes of bodies having the 
following properties in common:—(1) solu¬ 
bility in water; (2) the power of neutralizing 
acids, and forming salts with them; (3) the 
property of corroding animal and vegetable 
substances; (4) the property of altering the 
tint of many colouring matters—thus, they 
turn litmus, reddened by an acid, into blue; 
turmeric, brown; and syrup of violets and 
infusion of red cabbages, green. The alka¬ 
lies are hydrates, or water in which half 

105 


ALKALOID. 

the hydrogen is replaced by a metal or 
compound radical. In its restricted and 
common sense the term is applied to four 
substances only ; hydrate of potassium 
(potash), hydrate of sodium (soda), hydrate 
of lithium (lithia), and hydrate of ammo¬ 
nium (an aqueous solution of ammonia). 
In a more general sense it is applied to the 
hydrates of the so-called alkaline earths 
(baryta, strontia, and lime), and to a large 
number of organic substances, both natural 
and artificial, described under Alkaloid .— 
Volatile alkali is a name for ammonia. 

Alkalim'eter, an instrument for ascer¬ 
taining the quantity of free alkali in any 
impure specimen, as in the potashes of com¬ 
merce. These, besides the carbonate of 
potash, of which they principally consist, 
usually contain a portion of foreign salts, 
as sulphate and chloride of potassium, and 
as the true worth of the substance, or price 
for which it ought to sell, depends entirely 
on the quantity of carbonate, it is of import 
ance to be able to measure it accurately by 
some easy process. This process depends 
on the neutralization of the alkali by an 
acid of known strength, the point of neu¬ 
tralization being determined by the fact 
that neutral liquids are without action on 
either red or blue litmus solution. The 
alkalimeter is merely a graduated tube 
furnished with a stop-cock at the lower 
extremity, from which the standard acid 
is dropped into water in which a certain 
quantity of the substance is dissolved. The 
quantity required to produce neutralization 
being noted, the strength of the liquid 
tested is easily arrived at. A process of 
neutralization, exactly the same in prin¬ 
ciple, may be employed to test the strength 
of acids by alkalies, the one process being 
called alkalimetry , the other acidimetry. 

Al'kaloid, a term applied to a class of 
nitrogenized compounds having certain alka¬ 
line properties, found in living plants, and 
containing their active principles, usually 
in combination with organic acids. Their 
names generally end in ine, as morphine, 
quinine , aconitine, caffeine, &c. Most alka¬ 
loids occur in plants, but some are formed 
by decomposition. Their alkaline character 
depends on the nitrogen they contain. Most 
natural alkaloids contain carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, and oxygen, but the greater num¬ 
ber of artificial ones want the oxygen. The 
only property common to all alkaloids is 
that of combining with acids to form salts, 
and some exhibit an alkaline reaction with 



ALKANET-ALLAN. 


colours. Alkaloids form what is termed 
the organic bases of plants. Although 
formed originally within the plant, it has 
been found possible to prepare several of 
these alkaloids by purely artificial means. 

Al'kanet, a dyeing drug, the bark of the 
root of the Anchusa or Alkanna tinctoria, 
a plant of the order Boraginacese, with 
downy and spear-shaped leaves, and clusters 
of small purple or reddish flowers. The 
plant is sometimes cultivated in Britain, 
but most of the alkanet of commerce is 
imported from the Levant or from southern 
France. It imparts a fine deep-red colour 
to all unctuous substances and is used for 
colouring oils, plasters, lip-salve, confections, 
&c.; also in compositions for rubbing and 
giving colour to mahogany furniture, and 
to colour spurious port-wine. 

Alkan'na, a name of henna. See also 
Alkanet. 

Alkar'sin, an extremely poisonous liquid 
containing kakodyle, together with oxida¬ 
tion products of this substance, and formerly 
known as Cadet’s fuming liquor, character¬ 
ized by its insupportable smell and high 
degree of spontaneous combustibility when 
exposed to air. 

Al-katif, a town of Arabia, on the Per¬ 
sian Gulf, carrying on a considerable trade. 
Pop. 6000. 

Alkmaar (alk'mar), a town of the Nether¬ 
lands, prov. of North Holland, on the North 
Holland Canal, and 20 miles N.N.W. of Am¬ 
sterdam, regularly built, with a fine church 
(St. Lawrence) and a richly decorated 
Gothic town-house; manufactures of salt, 
sail-cloth, vinegar, leather, &c., and an 
extensive trade in cattle, corn, butter, and 
cheese. Pop. 13,304. 

Alko'ran. See Koran. 

Alla breve (bra'va), a musical direction 
expressing that a breve is to be played as 
fast as a semibreve, a semibreve as fast as 
a minim, and so on. 

Al lah, in Arabic, the name of God, a 
word of kindred origin with the Hebrew 
word Elohim. Allah Akbar (God is great) 
is a Mohammedan war-cry. 

Allahabad' (‘city of Allah’), an ancient 
city of India, capital of the North-west 
Provinces, on the wedge of land formed by 
the Jumna and the Ganges, largely built of 
mud houses, though the English quarter 
has more of a European aspect. Among 
the remarkable buildings are the fort, occu¬ 
pying the angle between the rivers, and 
containing the remains of an ancient palace, 


and now also the barracks, &c.; the mauso¬ 
leum and garden of Khosru, the tomb being 
a handsome domed building; the govern¬ 
ment offices and courts; government house; 
the Roman Catholic cathedral; the Central 
College for the North-west Provinces; the 
Mayo Memorial and town-hall. Allahabad 
is one of the chief resorts of Hindu pilgrims, 
who have their sins washed away by bath¬ 
ing in the waters of the sacred rivers 
Ganges and Jumna at their junction ; and 
is also the scene of a great fair in December 
and January. There are no manufactures 
of importance, but a large general and 
transit trade is carried on. The town 
is as old as the third century B.c. In 
the mutiny of 1857 it was the scene of a 
serious outbreak and massacre. Pop. 
150,378. — The division of Allahabad 
contains the districts of Cawnpur, Futteh- 
pur, Hamirpur, Banda, Jaunpur, and Alla¬ 
habad; area, 13,746 square miles; pop. 
5,754,855.—The district contains an area 
of 2833 square miles, about five-sixths being 
under cultivation. Pop. 1,474,106. 

Allaman'da, a genus of American tropi¬ 
cal plants, order Apocynacese, with large 
yellow or violet flowers, some of them met 
with in European greenhouses. A cathar- 
tica has strong emetic and purgative pro¬ 
perties. 

Allan, David, a Scottish painter, born 
1744, died 1796. He studied in Foulis’s aca¬ 
demy of painting and engraving in Glasgow, 
and for sixteen years in Italy; finally estab¬ 
lishing himself at Edinburgh, where he suc¬ 
ceeded Runciman as master of the Trustees’ 
Academy. His illustrations of the Gentle 
Shepherd, the Cotter’s Saturday Night, and 
other sketches of rustic life and manners in 
Scotland, obtained for him the name of the 
‘Scottish Hogarth.’ 

Allan, Sir William, a distinguished Scot¬ 
tish artist, born in 1782, died in 1850. He 
was a fellow student with Wilkie in Edin¬ 
burgh, afterwards a student of the Royal 
Academy, London; then went to St. Peters¬ 
burg, and remained for ten years in the 
Russian dominions. In 1814 he returned 
to Scotland, and publicly exhibited his pic¬ 
tures, one of which (Circassian Captives) 
made his reputation. He now turned his 
attention to historical painting, and pro¬ 
duced Knox admonishing Mary Queen of 
Scots, Murder of Rizzio, Exiles on their 
way to Siberia, The Slave Market at Con¬ 
stantinople, &c.; latterly also battle scenes, 
as the Battle of Prestonpans, Nelson boar'* 

106 


ALLANTOIS-ALLEMANDE. 


ing the San Nicolas, and two pictures of 
the Battle of Waterloo, the one from the 
British, the other from the French position, 
and delineating the actual scene and the 
incidents therein taking place at the mo¬ 
ment chosen for the representation. One 
of these \\ aterloo pictures was purchased 
by the Duke of Wellington. He travelled 
extensively, visiting Italy, Greece, Asia 
Minor, Spain, and Barbary. In 1835 he 
became R.A., in 1838 president of the Scot 
tish Academy, in IS42 he was knighted. 

Allan tois, a structure appearing during 
the early development of vertebrate ani¬ 
mals—Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia. It 
is largely made up of blood-vessels, and, 
especially in birds, attains a large size. It 
forms the inner lining to the shell, and may 
thus be viewed as the surface by means of 
which the respiration of the embryo is car¬ 
ried on. In Mammalia the allantois is not 
so largely developed as in Birds, and it 
enters largely into the formation of the pla¬ 
centa. 

Alleghany (al-le-ga'ni;, a river of Penn¬ 
sylvania and New York, which unites with 
the Monongahela at Pittsburg to form the 
Ohio; navigable nearly 200 miles above 
Pittsburg. 

Alleghany Mountains, a name sometimes 
used as synonymous with Appalachians, but 
also often restricted to the portion of those 
mountains that traverses the states of Vir¬ 
ginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania from 
south-west to north-east, and consists of a 
series of parallel ridges for the most part 
wooded to the summit, and with some fer¬ 
tile valleys between. Their mean elevation 
is about 2500 feet; but in Virginia they 
rise to over 4000. 

Allegheny (al-le-gen'i), a city of the 
United States, in Pennsylvania, on the river 
Alleghany, opposite Pittsburg, of which it 
may be considered virtually to be a suburb, 
and with which it is connected by six 
bridges. The principal industries are con¬ 
nected with iron and machinery. Pop. 
105,287. Also called Allegheny City. 

Alle'giance (from L. alliyare, to bind), 
according to Blackstone, is ‘the tie or liga- 
men which binds the subject to the sove¬ 
reign in return for that protection which 
the sovereign affords the subject,’ or, gene¬ 
rally, the obedience which every subject or 
citizen owes to the government of his coun¬ 
try. It used to be the doctrine of the 
English law that natural-born subjects ow y e 
an allegiance which is intrinsic and perpe¬ 

107 


tual, and which cannot be divested by any 
act of their own ; but this is no longer the 
case. Aliens owe a temporary or local 
allegiance to the government under which 
they for the time reside. A usurper in un¬ 
disturbed possession of the crown is entitled 
to allegiance; and thus treasons against 
Henry VI. were punished in the reign of 
Edward IV., though the former had, by 
act of Parliament, been declared a usurper. 

Al'legory, a figurative representation in 
which the signs (words or forms) signify 
something besides their literal or direct 
meaning. In rhetoric allegory is often but a 
continued simile. Parables and fables are 
a species of allegory. Sometimes long works 
are throughout allegorical, as Spenser's 
Faerie Queene and Bunyan’s Pilgrim's 
Progress. When an allegory is thus con¬ 
tinued it is indispensable to its success that 
not only the allegorical meaning should be 
appropriate, but that the story should have 
an interest of its own in the direct meaning 
apart from the allegorical signification. Al¬ 
legory is often made use of in painting and 
sculpture as well as in literature. 

Allegri (al-lagre), Gregorio, an Italian 
composer, born at Rome about 1580, died 
thereabout 1650; celebrated for his miserere 
music to the fifty-seventh psalm, which in 
the Latin version begins with that word. 

Allegro (Italian al-la/gro), a musical term 
expressing a more or less quick rate of 
movement, or a piece of music or move¬ 
ment in lively time. Allegro moderato, 
moderately quick; allegro maestoso , quick 
but with dignity; allegro assai and allegro 
molto, very quick; allegro con brio or con 
fuoco y with fire and energy; allegrissimo, 
with the utmost rapidity. 

Allein (al'en), Joseph, English Nonconfor¬ 
mist divine; born 1633, died 1668; the author 
of a popular religious book entitled, An 
Alarm to Unconverted Sinners. 

Allein (al'en), Richard, English Noncon¬ 
formist divine; born in 1611, died 1681; 
rector for twenty years of Batcombe 
(Somerset); deprived of his living at the 
Restoration, and imprisoned for preaching. 
He w'rote, among other things, Vindicise 
Pietatis, or a Vindication of Godliness, 
which was condemned to be burned in the 
royal kitchen. 

Alleluia. See I[alleluia. 

Allemande (al-mand), a kind of slow, 
graceful dance, invented in France in the 
time of Louis XIV., and again in vogue ’ 
the time of the First Empire. 



ALLEN 


ALLIACEOUS PLANTS. 


Allen, Bog of, the name applied to a 
series of bogs in Ireland (not to one con¬ 
tinuous morass), dispersed, often widely 
apart, with extensive tracts of dry culti¬ 
vated soil between, over a broad belt of land 
stretching across the centre of the country, 
the bogs being, however, all on the east side 
of the Shannon. 

Allen, Ethan, an American revolutionary 
partisan and general; born 1737, died 1789. 
He surprised and captured Ticonderoga Fort 
(1775); attacked Montreal, and was cap¬ 
tured and sent to England, being exchanged 
in 1778; wrote against Christianity.—His 
younger brother, Ira, was also prominent 
in the revolutionary era. 

Allen, John, a Scotch political and his¬ 
torical writer; born in 1771, died in 1843. 
He studied medicine, and became M.D. of 
Edinburgh University. In 1801 he went 
abroad with Lord Holland and family, and 
henceforth he maintained this connection, 
being long an inmate of Holland House (Lon¬ 
don) and a member of the brilliant society 
that assembled there. He contributed many 
articles to the Edinburgh Review; wrote an 
Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the 
Royal Prerogative in England; Vindication 
of the Ancient Independence of Scotland; 
&c. 

Allen, Ralph, celebrated as a philanthro¬ 
pist, and as the friend of Pope, Fielding, 
and the elder Pitt, was born in 1694, died 
in 1764. He lived mostly at Bath, where 
he made a large income as farmer of a sys¬ 
tem of posts and as owner of quarries. He 
is the prototype of Squire Allworthy in 
Fielding’s Tom Jones; and after the no¬ 
velist’s death he took charge of his family. 
Pope, who received many kindnesses at his 
hands, referred to him in the lines: 

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, 

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. 

With Pitt he was on intimate terms, and 
left him £1000 by will. Hurd, Sherlock, 
and Warburton were also his friends. 

Allen, Thomas, an English mathemati¬ 
cian, philosopher, antiquarian,and astrologer, 
bom in 1542, died in 1632. He studied at 
Oxford, and lived the greater part of his life 
in learned retirement, corresponding with 
many of the famous men of his time. In 
his own day he was generally reputed a 
dealer in the black art. 

Allen, William, cardinal, an English 
Roman Catholic of the time of Queen 
Jilizabetb, a strenuous opponent of Protes¬ 


tantism and supporter of the claims of 
Philip II. to the English throne; born 
1532, died 1594. It was by his efforts that 
the English college for Catholics at Douay 
was established. He was made cardinal in 
1587. His writings were numerous. 

Allen, William, d.d., American clergy¬ 
man and author; born 1784, died 1868. He 
was president of Bowdoin College 1820- 
1839; author of American Biographical and 
Historical Dictionary; a Supplement to 
Webster’s Dictionary; Poems, &c. 

Allenstein (allen-stln), a town in East 
Prussia, 65 miles south of Konigsberg, on 
the Alle, with breweries and manufactures 
of iron and lucifer matches. Pop. 7610. 

Allentown, a town in the United States, 
Pennsylvania, on Lehigh river, 18 miles 
above its junction with the Delaware. It 
has an important trade in coal and iron ore, 
with large blast-furnaces, rolling-mills, &c. 
Pop. in 1890, 25,228. 

Allep'pi. See Aulapolay. 

Alleyn (al'len), Edward, an actor and 
theatre proprietor in the reigns of Elizabeth 
and James I., friend of Jonson and Shak- 
spere; born 1566, died 1626. Having become 
wealthy, he built Dulwich College, under 
the name of ‘The College of God’s Gift,’ in 
1613-17. See Dulwich. 

All-fours, a game at cards, which derives 
its name from the four chances of which it 
consists, for each of which a point is scored. 
These chances are high , or the ace of trumps, 
or next best trump out; low, or the deuce 
of trumps, or next lowest trump out; jack, 
or the knave of trumps; game, the majority 
of pips collected from the tricks taken by 
the respective players. The player who has 
all these is said to have all-fours. It is 
played by two or four persons with the full 
pack. The ace counts four, the king three, 
queen two, knave one, ten ten. 

All-hallows, All-hallowmas, a name for 
All-saints’ Day. 

Al'lia, a small affluent of the Tiber, join¬ 
ing it about 12 miles from Rome, famous 
for the defeat sustained by the Roman 
army from Brennus and his Gauls, result¬ 
ing in the capture and sack of Rome, about 
390 b.c. 

Allia'ceous Plants, plants belonging to 
the genus Allium (order Liliaceae), that to 
which the onion, leek, garlic, shalot, &c., 
belong, or to other allied genera, and distin¬ 
guished by a certain peculiar pungent smell 
and taste characterized as alliaceous. This 
flavour is also found in a few plants having 

108 


ALLIANCE-ALLIGATOR. 


no botanical affinities with the above, as 
in the AUiaria offi.cina.lis , or jack-by-the- 
hedge, a plant of the order Cruciferae. 

Alli'ance, a league between two or more 
powers. Alliances are divided into offensive 
and defensive. The former are for the pur¬ 
pose of attacking a common enemy, and the 
latter for mutual defence. An alliance often 
unites both of these conditions. Offensive 
alliances, of course, are usually directed 
against some particular enemy; defensive 
alliances against anyone from whom an 
attack may come. 


Alliance, Holy. See Holy Alliance. 

Alliance, Stark county, Ohio, 57 miles 
southeast of Cleveland, and 93 miles north- 
northwest of Pittsburgh; seat of Mt. 
Union College. Manufactures of bagging, 
white lead, and rolling mill. Pop. in 
1890, 7607. 

Al'libone, Samuel Austin, LL.D., an 
American author, born in 1816, died 1889. 
He compiled a most useful Critical Dic¬ 
tionary of English Literature and British 
and American Authors (three vols., 1859, 
1870, 1871). 



Group of Alligators. 


Allice, a name of the common shad. 

Allier (al-le-a), a central department of 
France, intersected by the river Allier, and 
partly bounded by the Loire; surface diver¬ 
sified by offsets of the Cevennes and other 
ranges, rising in the south to over 4000 feet, 
and in general richly wooded. It has exten¬ 
sive beds of coal as well as other minerals, 
which are actively worked, there being 
several flourishing centres of mining and 
manufacturing enterprise; mineral waters 
at Vichy, Bourbon, L’Archambault, &c. 
Large numbers of sheep and cattle are bred. 
Area, 2822 miles. Capital, Moulins. Pop. 
424,582.—The river Allier flows north¬ 
ward for 200 miles through Lozere, Upper 
Loire, Puy de Dome, and Allier, and en¬ 
ters the Loire, of which it is the chief tri¬ 
butary. 

Alliga'tion, a rule of arithmetic, chiefly 
found in the older books, relating to the 
solution of questions concerning the com¬ 
pounding or mixing together of different in¬ 
gredients, or ingredients of different quali¬ 
ties or values. Thus if a quantity of sugar 
worth 8 d. the lb. and another quantity worth 
10r/. are mixed, the question to be solved by 

109 


alligation is, what is the value of the mix¬ 
ture by the pound? 

Alliga'tor (a corruption of Sp. cl lagarto, 
lit. the lizard—L. lacertus), a genus of rep¬ 
tiles of the family Crocodilidse, differing from 
the true crocodiles in having a shorter and 
flatter head, in having cavities or pits in the 
upper jaw, into which the long canine teeth 
of the under jaw fit, and in having the feet 
much less webbed. Their habits are less per¬ 
fectly aquatic. They are confined to the 
warmer parts of America, where they fre¬ 
quent swamps and marshes, and may be seen 
basking on the dry ground during the day 
in the heat of the sun. They are most active 
during the night, when they make a loud 
bellowing. The largest of these animals 
grow to the length of 18 or 20 feet. They 
are covered by a dense armour of horny 
scales, impenetrable to a rifle-ball, and 
have a huge mouth, armed with strong, 
oonical teeth. They swim with wonderful 
celerity, impelled by their long, laterally- 
compressed, and powerful tails. On land 
their motions are proportionally slow and 
embarrassed because of the length and un¬ 
wieldiness of their bodies and the shortness 

































ALLIGATOR-APPLE — 

of their limbs. They live on fish, and any 
small animals or carrion, and sometimes 
catch pigs on the shore, or dogs which are 
swimming. They even sometimes make man 
their prey. In winter they burrow in the 
mud of swamps and marshes, lying torpid 
till the warm weather. The female lays a 
great number of eggs, which are deposited 
in the sand or mud, and left to be hatched 
by the heat of the sun, but the mother alli¬ 
gator is very attentive to her young. The 
most fierce and dangerous species is that found 
in the southern parts of the United States 
{Alligator Lucius), having the snout a little 
turned up,slightly resembling that of the pike. 
The alligators of South America are there 
very often called Caymans. A. sclerops is 
known also as the Spectacled Cayman, from 
the prominent bony rim surrounding the orbit 
of each eye. The flesh of the alligator is some¬ 
times eaten. Among the fossils of the south 
of England are remains of a true alligator 
{A. Ilantoniensis) in the Eocene beds of the 
Hampshire basin. 

Alligator-apple {Anona palustris), a 
fruit allied to the custard-apple, growing in 
marshy districts in Jamaica, little eaten on 
account of its narcotic properties. 

Alligator-pear ( Persia gratissima), an 
evergreen tree of the natural order Laura- 
cese, with a fruit resembling a large pear, 
1 to 2 lbs. in weight, with a firm marrow - 
like pulp of a delicate flavour; called also 
avocado-pear, or subaltei*n’s butter. It is 
a native of tropical America. 

Al'lingham, William, an English poet, 
born in Ireland in 1828, died 1889. lie was 
a frequent contributor to periodicals, and 
for some time edited Fraser’s Magazine. 

Allison, William B., U. S. Senator 
from Iowa, was born in Perry, Ohio, March 
2, 1829. After serving for four terms as 
Representative in Congress from Iowa, in 
1878 elected to U. S. Senate, of which body 
he has since been an able member. 

Allitera tion, the repetition of the same 
letter at the beginning of two or more 
words immediately succeeding each other, 
or at short intervals; as many men many 
minds; death defies the doctor. ‘Apt alli¬ 
teration's artful aid.’ Churckhill. ‘Puffs, 
powders, patches, Bibles, Mllet-doux.’ Pope. 
In the ancient German and Scandinavian 
and in early English poetry alliteration 
took the place of terminal rhymes, the 
alliterative syllables being made to recur 
with a certain regularity in the same posi¬ 
tion in successive verses. In the Vision of 


ALLOTMENT SYSTEM. 

William Concerning Piers the Ploughman, 
for instance, it is regularly employed as in 
the following lines:— 

Hire robe was ful riche- of red scarlet engreyned, 
With ribanes of red gold - and of riche stones; 
Hire arraye me ravysshed - such ricchesse saw I 
nevere; 

I had u’ondre what she teas 1 and whas wyl she 

tee re. 

In the hands of some English poets and 
prose writers of later times alliteration 
became a mere conceit. It is still employed 
in Icelandic poetry, and also in Finnish 
poetry. So far has alliteration sometimes 
been carried that long compositions have 
been written every word of which com¬ 
menced with the same letter. 

ATlium, a genus of plants, order Liliaceae, 
containing numerous well-known species of 
pot-herbs. They are umbelliferous, and 
mostly perennial, herbaceous plants, but a 
few are biennial. Among them are garlic 
(A. sativum), onion (A. Cepa), leek [A. Por- 
rum), chive (A. Schcenoprasum), shallot {A. 
ascalonicum). The peculiar alliaceous fla¬ 
vour that belongs to them is well known. 

ATloa, a river port of Scotland, on the 
north bank of the Forth (where there is 
now a bridge), 7 miles from Stirling, county 
of Clackmannan. It carries on brewing, 
distilling, and shipbuilding; has manufac¬ 
tures of woollens, bottles, &c., and a con¬ 
siderable shipping trade. Pop. 8822. 

Allocation, an address, a term particu¬ 
larly applied to certain addresses on im¬ 
portant occasions made by the pope to the 
cardinals. 

Allo'dium, land held in one’s own right, 
without any feudal obligation to a superior 
or lord. In England, according to the 
theory of the British constitution, all land 
is held of the crown (by feudal tenure); 
the word allodial is, therefore, never applied 
to landed property there. 

Allop'athy, the name applied by homoeo- 
pathists to systems of medicine other than 
their own; Hahnemann’s principle being 
that ‘like cures like,’ he called his own 
system homoeopathy (Greek, homoios, like; 
pathos, disease), and other systems allo¬ 
pathy (Greek, alios, other, and pathos, dis¬ 
ease). See Homoeopathy. 

Allotment System, the system of al¬ 
lotting small portions of land (say an acre 
or less) to farm-labourers or other workers, 
to be cultivated after their regular work by 
themselves and their families, a system be¬ 
lieved by many to be calculated greatly to 

110 



ALLOTROPY - 

improve their condition. An Allotment Act 
for England passed in 1887, authorizes the 
sanitary authorities in any locality to deter¬ 
mine if there is a sufficient demand for al¬ 
lotments there, and to acquire land to be 
let to the labouring population resident in 
their district. Such land may be compul¬ 
sorily acquired, due compensation being 
given; but land belonging to a park, plea¬ 
sure-ground, garden, &c., is not to be so ac¬ 
quired. No person is to hold more than 
one acre as an allotment; and the rents are 
to be fixed at such amount as may reason¬ 
ably be deemed sufficient to guarantee the 
sanitary authority from loss. No building 
is to be erected on any allotment other than 
a tool-house, pig-stye, shed, or the like. 

Allot'ropy (Greek alios, other, tropos, 
habit), a term used to express the fact that 
one and the same element may exist in 
different forms, differing widely in external 
physical properties. Thus, carbon occurs 
as the diamond, and as charcoal and plum¬ 
bago, and is therefore regarded as a sub¬ 
stance subject to allotropy. 

AlToway, a parish of Scotland, now in¬ 
cluded in Ayr parish. Here Burns was 
born in 1759, and the ‘auld haunted kirk,’ 
near his birthplace, was the scene of the 
dance of witches in Tam o’ Shanter. 

Alloy', a substance produced by melting 
together two or more metals, sometimes a 
definite chemical compound, but more gen¬ 
erally merely a mechanical mixture. Most 
metals mix together in all proportions, but 
others unite only in definite proportions, 
and form true chemical compounds. Others 
a<jain resist combination, and when fused 
together form not a homogeneous mixture, 
but a conglomerate of distinct masses. The 
changes produced in their physical proper¬ 
ties by the combination of metals are very 
various. Their hardness is in general in¬ 
creased, their malleability and ductility 
impaired. The colour of an alloy may be 
scarcely different from that of one of its 
components, or it may show traces of 
neither of two. Its specific gravity is some¬ 
times less than the mean of that of its 
component metals. Alloys are always more 
fusible than the metal most difficult to melt 
that enters into their composition, and 
generally even more so than the most easily 
melted one. Newton’s fusible metal, com¬ 
posed of three parts of tin, two or five parts 
of lead, and five or eight parts of bismuth, 
melts at temperatures varying from 198° to 
210° F. (and therefore in boiling water); 

111 


— ALMACK’S. 

its components fuse respectively at the 
temperatures 442°, 600°, and 478° F. Some¬ 
times each metal retains its own fusing- 
point. With few exceptions metals are not 
much used in a pure state. British gold 
coins contain 8 4 per cent alloy; British 
silver coins, 74 per cent. Printers’ types 
are made from an alloy of lead and anti¬ 
mony; brass and a numerous list of other 
alloys are formed from copper and zinc; 
bronze from copper and tin. 

All Saints’ Day, a festival of the Chris¬ 
tian Church, instituted in 835, and cele¬ 
brated on the 1st of November in honour 
of the saints in general. 

All Souls’ College, a college of Oxford 
University, founded in 1437 by Henry Chi¬ 
chele, archbishop of Canterbury. Attached 
to it are the Chichele professorship of inter¬ 
national law, and the Chichele professorship 
of modern history. 

All Souls’ Day, a festival of the Roman 
Catholic Church, instituted in 998, and ob¬ 
served on the 2d of November for the relief 
of souls in purgatory. 

Allspice (al spls), or Pimenta, is the dried 
berry of a West Indian species of myrtle 
(Myrtvs Pimenta), a beautiful tree with white 
and fragrant aromatic flowers and leaves of 
a deep shining green. Pimenta is thought 
to resemble in flavour a mixture of cinna¬ 
mon, nutmegs, and cloves, whence the popu¬ 
lar name of allspice; it is also called Ja¬ 
maica pepper. It is employed in cookery, 
also in medicine as an agreeable aromatic, 
and forms the basis of a distilled water, a 
spirit, and an essential oil. 

All'ston (al'stun), Washington, an Ameri¬ 
can painter; born 1779, diedl843. Hestudied 
in London and Rome, and is most celebrated 
for his pictures of scriptural subjects. He 
also wrote poems and a novelette (Monaldi). 

Allu'vium (Latin, alluvium — ad, to, and 
luo, to wash), deposits of soil collected by 
the action of water, such as are found in 
valleys and plains, consisting of loam, clay, 
gravel, &c., washed down from the higher 
grounds. Great alterations are often pro¬ 
duced by alluvium—deltas and whole islands 
being often formed by this cause. Much of 
the rich land along the banks of rivers is 
alluvial in its origin. 

Allygurh. See Aligakh. 

Alma, a small river of Russia, in the 
Crimea, celebrated from the victory gained 
by the allied British and French over the 
Russians, September 20, 1854. 

Al'mack’s, the name formerly given to 



ALMA DA — 

Certain assembly-rooms in King Street, St. 
James’s, London, derived from Almack, a 
tavern-keeper, by whom they were built, 
and whose real name is said to have been 
M‘Call; now known as Willis's Rooms. 
They were first opened about 1770, and be¬ 
came famous for the extreme exclusiveness 
displayed by the lady patronesses in regard 
to the admission of applicants for tickets to 
the balls held here—only those of the most 
assured social standing being admitted. 

Alma'da, a town of Portugal, on the 
Tagus, opposite Lisbon. Pop. 4580. 

Almaden', a town of Spain, pi'o vince of 
Ciudad - Real, celebrated both in ancient 
and modern times for its mines of quick¬ 
silver (in the form of cinnabar). Pop. 7421. 

Al'maden, a place in California, U.S., 
about 60 m. s.E. of San Francisco, with rich 
quicksilver mines, the product of which has 
been largely employed in gold and silver 
mining. 

Al'magest, the Arabic (semi-Greek) name 
of a celebrated astronomical work composed 
by Claudius Ptolemy. 

Alma'gro, an old town of Spain, prov. 
Ciudad-Real (New Castile), with important 
lace manufactures. Pop. 8628. 

Alma'gro, Diego de, Spanish ‘ Conquis¬ 
tador,’ a foundling, born in 1475, killed 
1538. He took part with Pizarro in the con¬ 
quest of Peru, and after frequent disputes 
with Pizarro about their respective shares 
in their conquests led an expedition against 
Chili, which he failed to conquer. On his 
return a struggle took place between him 
and Pizarro, in which Almagro was finally 
overcome, taken prisoner, strangled, and 
afterwards beheaded. He was avenged by 
his son, who raised an insurrection in which 
Pizarro was assassinated in 1541. The 
younger Almagro was put to death in 1542 
by De Castro, the new viceroy of Peru. 

Almalee', a town of south-western Asiatic 
Turkey, 50 miles from Adalia, with thriv¬ 
ing manufactures and a considerable trade. 
Pop. 12,000. 

Al'ma Ma'ter (L., fostering or bounteous 
mother), a term familiarly applied to their 
own university by those who have had a 
university education. 

Al-Mamun (raa-mon'), a caliph of the 
Abasside dynasty, son of Harun-al Rashid, 
born 786, died 833. Under him Bagdad 
became a great centre of art and science. 

Al manac, a calendar, in which are set 
down the rising and setting of the sun, the 
phases of the moon, the most remarkable 


ALMANAC. 

positions and phenomena of the heavenly 
bodies, for every month and day of the 
year; also the several fasts and feasts to 
be observed in the church and state, &c., 
and often much miscellaneous information 
likely to be useful to the public. The term 
is of Arabic origin, but the Arabs were not 
the first to use almanacs, which indeed ex¬ 
isted from remote ages. In England they are 
known from the fourteenth century, there 
being several English almanacs of this cen¬ 
tury existing in MS. They became generally 
used in Europe within a short time after 
the invention of printing; and they were 
very early remarkable, as some are still, for 
the mixture of truth and falsehood which 
they contained. Their effects in France 
were found so mischievous, from the pre¬ 
tended prophecies which they published, 
that an edict was promulgated by Henry 
III. in 1579 forbidding any predictions to 
be inserted in them relating to civil affairs, 
whether those of the state or of private per¬ 
sons. In the reign of James I. of England 
letters-patent were granted to the two uni¬ 
versities and the Stationers’ Company for 
an exclusive right of printing almanacs, but 
in 1775 this monopoly was abolished. Dur¬ 
ing the civil war of Charles I., and thence 
onward, English almanacs were conspicuous 
for the unblushing boldness of their astro¬ 
logical predictions, and their determined 
perpetuation of popular errors. The most 
famous English almanac was Poor Robin’s 
Almanack, which was published from 1663 
to 1775. Gradually, however, a better 
taste began to prevail, and in 1828 the 
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know¬ 
ledge, by publishing the British Almanac, 
had the merit of taking the lead in the pro¬ 
duction of an unexceptionable almanac in 
Great Britain. The example thus set has 
been almost universally adopted. The cir¬ 
culation of almanacs continued to be much 
cramped by the very heavy duty of one 
shilling and threepence per copy till 1834, 
when this duty was abolished. About 200 
new almanacs were started immediately on 
the repeal. Almanacs, from their periodical 
character, and the frequency with which 
they are referred to, are now more and more 
used as vehicles for conveying statistical 
and other useful information, some being 
intended for the inhabitants of a particular 
country or district, others for a particular 
class or party. Some of the almanacs that 
are regularly published ever)? year are ex¬ 
tremely useful, and are indeed almost indis- 

112 



ALMANDINE-ALMODOVAR. 


pensable to men engaged in official, mer¬ 
cantile, literary, or professional business. 
Such in Great Britain are Thom’s Official 
Directory of the United Kingdom, the British 
Almanac with its Companion, Oliver and 
Boyd’s Edinburgh Almanac, and Whitaker’s 
Almanac. In the United States is pub¬ 
lished The American Almanac, a useful 
compilation. The Almanach de Gotha, which 
has appeared at Gotha since 1764, contains 
in small bulk a wonderful quantity of infor¬ 
mation regarding the reigning families and 
governments, the finances, commerce, popu¬ 
lation, &c., of the different states through¬ 
out the world. It is published both in a 
French and in a German edition. Almanacs 
that pretend to foretell the weather and 
occurrences of various kinds are still popu¬ 
lar in Britain, France, and elsewhere, t- 
The Nautical Almanack is an important 
work published annually by the British 
government, two or three years in advance, 
in which is contained much useful astrono¬ 
mical matter, more especially the distances 
of the moon from the sun, and from certain 
fixed stars, for every three hours of ap¬ 
parent time, adapted to the meridian of the 
Royal Observatory, Greenwich. By com¬ 
paring these with the distances carefully 
observed at sea the mariner may, with com¬ 
parative ease, infer his longitude to a de¬ 
gree of accuracy unattainable in any other 
way, and sufficient for most nautical pur¬ 
poses. This almanac was commenced in 
1767 by Dr. Maskelyne, astronomer royal. 
The French Connaissance des Temps is pub¬ 
lished with the same views as the English 
Nautical Almanac, and nearly on the same 
plan. It commenced in 1679. Of a similar 
character is the Astronomisches Jahrbuch 
published at Berlin. 

The American Ephemeris and Nautical 
Almanac is issued annually since 1855 by 
the Bureau of Navigation of the U. S. 

Alman'sa, a town of south-eastern Spain 
(Murcia), near which was fought (April 25, 
1707) a decisive battle in the war of the 
Spanish succession, when the French, under 
the Duke of Berwick, defeated the Anglo- 
Spanish army under the Earl of Galway. 
Pop. 7334. 

Alman'zur, or Almansur, a caliph of the 
Abasside dynasty, reigned 754-775. He 
was cruel and treacherous and a persecutor 
of the Christians, but a patron of learning. 

Alma-Tad'ema, Lawrence, a Dutch 
painter, born in 1836, resident since 1870 in 
England, where he is a naturalized subject. 
vol. I. 113 


In 1876 he was elected an associate of the 
Royal Academy, in 1879 an academician; 
he is also a member of various foreign aca¬ 
demies. He is especially celebrated for his 
pictures of ancient Roman, Greek, and 
Egyptian life, which are painted with great 
realism and archaeological correctness. 

Al'meh, the name given in Egypt to a 
class of girls whose profession is to sing for 
the public amusement, being engaged to 
perform at feasts and other entertainments 
(including funerals). Many of them are 
skilful improvisatrici. 

Almeida (al-ma'i-da), one of the strong¬ 
est fortresses in Portugal, in the province 
of Beira, near the Spanish border, on the 
Coa. Pop. 2000. Taken by Mass^na from 
the English in 1810, retaken by Wellington 
in 1811. 

Almeida (dal-ma'i-da), Francisco d’, 
first Portuguese viceroy of India, son of the 
Conde de Abrantes, born about the middle 
of the fifteenth century. He fought with 
renown against the Moors, and being ap¬ 
pointed governor of the new Portuguese 
settlements on the African and Indian 
coasts, he sailed for India in 1505, accom¬ 
panied by his son Lorenzo and other emi¬ 
nent men. In Africa he took possession of 
Quiloa and Mombas, and in the East he 
conquered Cananor, Cochin, Calicut, &c., 
and established forts and factories. His son 
Lorenzo discovered the Maldives and Ma¬ 
dagascar, but perished in an attack made 
on him by a fleet sent by the Sultan of 
Egypt, with the aid of the Porte and the 
Republic of Venice. Having signally de¬ 
feated the Mussulmans (1508), and avenged 
his son, and being superseded by Albu¬ 
querque, he sailed for Portugal, but was 
killed in a skirmish on the African coast in 
1510. 

Almelo', a town of Holland, prov. Over- 
yssel, on the Vechte; with manufactures 
of linen. Pop. 7758. 

Almeria (al-ma-re'a), a fortified seaport 
of southern Spain, capital of prov. Almeria, 
near the mouth of a river and on the gulf 
of same name, with no building of conse¬ 
quence except a Gothic cathedral, but with 
an important trade, exporting lead, esparto, 
barilla, &c. The province, which has an 
area of 3300 sq. miles, is generally moun¬ 
tainous, and rich in minerals. Pop. of town, 
40,323; of province, 349,854. 

Almodo'var, a town of Spain, prov. Ciu¬ 
dad-Real (New Castile), near the Sierra 
Morena. Pop. 10,362. 


8 



ALMOHADES 


ALOE. 


Almohades (al'mo-hadz), an Arabic or 
Moorish dynasty that ruled in Africa and 
Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth cen¬ 
turies, founded by a religious enthusiast. 
They overthrew the Almoravides in Spain, 
but themselves received a defeat in 1212 
from which they did not recover, and in 
1269 were overthrown in Africa. 
Al-mokanna. See Mokanna. 

Almond (a'mund), the fruit of the almond- 
tree ( Amygddlus communis ), a tree which 
grows usually to the height of 20 feet, and is 
akin to the peach, nectarine, &c. (order Bosa- 
ceae). It has beautiful pinkish flowers that 
appear before 
the leaves, 
which are 
oval, pointed, 
and delicate¬ 
ly serrated. 

It is a native 
of Africa and 
Asia, natural¬ 
ized in south¬ 
ern Europe, 
and cultiva¬ 
ted in Eng¬ 
land for its 
beauty, as its 
fruit does not 
ripen there. 

The fruit is a drupe, ovoid, and with 
downy outer surface; the fleshy covering 
is tough and fibrous; it covers the coin- 
pressed wrinkled stone inclosing the seed 
or almond within it. There are two varie¬ 
ties, one sweet and the other bitter; both 
are produced from A. communis , though 
from different varieties. The chief kinds of 
sweet almonds are the Valencian, Jordan, 
and Malaga. They contain a bland fixed 
oil, consisting chiefly of olein. Bitter al¬ 
monds come from Magador, and besides a 
fixed oil they contain a substance called 
emulsin, and also a bitter crystalline sub¬ 
stance called ctmygdalin, which, acting on 
the emulsin, produces prussic acid, whence 
the aroma of bitter almonds when mixed 
with water. A Imoad-oil, a bland fixed oil, is 
expressed from the kernels of either sweet or 
bitter almonds, and is used by perfumers 
and in medicine. A poisonous essential oil 
is obtained from bitter almonds, which is 
used for flavouring by cooks and confec¬ 
tioners, also by perfumers and in medi¬ 
cine. The name almond , with a qualify¬ 
ing word prefixed, is also given to the 
seeds of other species of plants; thus, Java 


almonds are the kernels of Canarium com¬ 
mune .. 

Almondbury (a'mund-be-ri), a town of 
England, west riding of Yorkshire, two 
miles s.E. of Huddersfield, with manufac¬ 
tures of woollens, cotton and silk goods. 
Pop. 13,977. 

Al'moner, an officer of a religious estab¬ 
lishment to whom belonged the distribu¬ 
tion of alms. The grand almoner ( grand 
aumonier) of France was the highest eccle¬ 
siastical dignitary in that kingdom before 
the revolution. The lord almoner, or lord 
high almoner of England, is generally a 
bishop, whose office is well-nigh a sinecure. 
He distributes the sovereign’s doles to the 
poor on Maundy Thursday. 

Almo'ra, a town and fortress of Hindustan, 
in- the North-west Provinces, capital of 
Kumaon, 170 miles e.n.e. from Delhi, a 
thriving little place. Pop. about 6000. 

Almo'ravides (-vidz), a Moorish dynasty 
which arose in north-western Africa in the 
eleventh century, and, having crossed the 
Straits of Gibraltar, gained possession of all 
Arabic Spain, but was overthrown by the 
Almohades in the following century. 

Al'mug (or Al'gum) tree, names which 
occur in 1 Ki. x. 11,12 and 2 Chr. ii. 8, and 
ix. 10, 11, as the names of trees of which 
the wood was used for pillars in the temple 
and the king’s house, for harps and psalteries, 
&c. They are said in one passage to be 
hewn in Lebanon, in another to be brought 
from Ophir. They have been identified by 
critics with the red sandal-wood of India. 
Some of them may possibly have been 
transplanted to Lebanon by the Phoenicians. 

Almunecar (al-mun-ye-kar'), a seaport 
of Spain, Andalusia, on the Mediterranean. 
Pop. 8194. 

Al'nager, formerly, in England, an official 
whose duty it was to inspect, measure, and 
stamp woollen cloth. 

Al'nus. See Alder. 

Alnwick (an'ik), a town of England, 
county town of Northumberland, 34 miles 
north from Newcastle, near the Ain. It is 
well built, and carries on tanning, brewing, 
and a general trade. Alnwick Castle, resi¬ 
dence of the dukes of Northumberland, for 
many centuries a fortress of great strength, 
stands close to the town. Pop. 6746. 

Aloe (al'o), the name of a number of 
plants belonging to the genus Aloe (order 
Liliaceae), some of which are not more than 
a few inches, whilst others are 30 feet and 
upwards in height; natives of Africa and 

114 



Almond (Amygddlus commiinis). 



ALPES. 


ALOES-WOOD 


other hot regions; leaves fleshy, thick, and 
more or less spinous at the edges or extrem¬ 
ity; flowers with a tubular corolla. Some 
of the" larger kinds are of great use, the 
fibrous parts of the leaves being made into 
cordage, fishing nets and lines, cloth, &c. 
The inspissated juice of several species is 
used in medicine, under the name of aloes, 
forming a bitter purgative. The principal 
drug producing species are, the Socotrine 
aloe (A. Socotrina), the Barbadoes aloe 
(A. vulgaris), the Cape aloe (A. spicdta), &c. 
A beautiful violet colour is afforded by the 
leaves of the Socotrine aloe. The American 
aloe (see Agave) is a different plant alto¬ 
gether ; as are also the aloes or lign-aloes 
of Scripture, which are supposed to be 
the Aquilaria Agallochum, or aloes-wood 
(which see). Aloe fibre is obtained from 
species of Aloe, Agave, Yucca, &c., and is 
made into coarse fabrics, ropes, &c. 

Aloes-wood, Eagle-wood, or Agila- 
wood, the inner portion of the trunk of 
Aquilaria ovdta and A. Agallochum, forest 
trees belonging to the order Aquilariacese, 
found in tropical Asia, and yielding a 
fragrant resinous substance, which, as well 
as the wood, is burned for its perfume. 
Another tree, the Aloexylon Agallochum 
(order Leguminosae), also produces aloes- 
wood. This wood is supposed to be the 
lign-aloes of the Bible. 

Alope'cia, a variety of baldness in which 
the hair falls off from the beard and eye¬ 
brows, as well as the scalp. 

Alopecu'rus, a genus of grasses. See 
Foxtail-grass. 

Alo'ra, a town of Southern Spain, prov. 
Malaga; pop. 10,014. 

Alost, or Aalst (a'lost, iilst), a town of 
Belgium, 15 miles vv.n.w. of Brussels, on 
the Dender (here navigable), with a beauti¬ 
ful, though unfinished, church, and an 
ancient town-hall; manufactures of lace, 
thread, linen and cotton goods, &c., and a 
considerable trade. Pop. (1880), 21,631. 

Alpac'a, a ruminant mammal of the 
camel tribe, and genus Auchenia (A. Paco), 
a native of the Andes, especially of the 
mountains of Chili and Peru, and so closely 
allied to the llama that by some it is 
regarded rather as a smaller variety than a 
distinct species. It has been domesticated, 
and remains also in a wild state. In form 
and size it approaches the sheep, but has a 
longer neck. It is valued chiefly for its long, 
soft, and silky wool, which is straighter than 
that of the sheep, and very strong, and is 

115 


woven into fabrics of great beauty, used for 
shawls, clothing for warm climates, coat- 
linings, and umbrellas, and known by the 



Alpaca {Auchenia Paco). 


same name. Its flesh is pleasant and whole¬ 
some. 

Alpena, Mich., U. S., 130 miles north¬ 
east of Saginaw City. It is an important 
lumber centre, has also two foundries and 
two banks. Pop. in 1890,11,283. 

Alpen-stock (German), a strong tall 
stick shod with iron, pointed at the end so 
as to take hold in, and give support on, ice 
and other dangerous places in climbing the 
Alps and other high mountains. 

Alpes (alp), the name of three departments 
in the south-east of France, all more or less 
covered by the Alps or their offshoots:— 
Basses-Alpes (btis-alp; Lower Alps) has 
mountains rising to a height of 8000 to 
10,000 feet, is drained by the Durance and 
its tributaries, and is the most thinly 
peopled department in France; area, 2685 
miles; capital, Digne. Pop. 129,494.— 
Hautes-Alpes (ot-alp; Upper Alps), mostly 
formed out of ancient Dauphine, traversed 
by the Cottian and Dauphin^ Alps (highest 
summits 12,000 ft.), drained chiefly by the 
Durance and its tributaries. It is the lowest 
department in France in point of absolute 
population; area, 2158 miles; capital, Gap; 
pop. 122,924.— Alpes-Maritimes (alp-ma- 
ri-tem; Maritime Alps) has the Mediter¬ 
ranean on the south, and mainly consists 
of the territory of Nice, ceded to France 
by Italy in 1860. The greater part of 
the surface is covered by the Maritime 
Alps; the principal river is the Var. It 
produces in the south, cereals, vines, olives, 
oranges, citrons, and other fruits; and there 
are manufactories of perfumes, liqueurs, 
soap, &c., and valuable fisheries. It is a 
favourite resort for invalids. Area, 1482 
square miles; capital, Nice; pop. 238,057. 







ALPHA-ALPHONSO. 


Al'pha aud O mega, the first and last 
letters of the Greek alphabet, sometimes 
used to signify the beginning and the end, 
or the first and the last of anything; also 
as a symbol of the Divine Being. They 
were also formerly the symbol of Christi¬ 
anity, and engraved accordingly on the 
tombs of the ancient Christians. 

Al'phabet (from Alpha and Beta , the two 
first letters of the Greek alphabet), the 
series of characters used in writing a lan¬ 
guage, and intended to represent the sounds 
of which it consists. The English alphabet, 
like most of those of modern Europe, is 
derived directly from the Latin, the Latin 
from the ancient Greek, and that from the 
Phoenician, which again is believed to have 
had its origin in the Egyptian hierogly¬ 
phics, the Hebrew alphabet also having the 
same origin. The names of the letters in 
Phoenician and Hebrew must have been 
almost the same, for the Greek names, 
which, with the letters, were borrowed from 
the former, differ little from the Hebrew. 
By means of the names we may trace the 
process by which the Egyptian characters 
were transformed into letters by the Phoe¬ 
nicians. Some Egyptian character would, 
by its form, recall the idea of a house, for 
example, in Phoenician or Hebrew beth. 
This character would subsequently come to 
be used wherever the sound b occurred. Its 
form might be afterwards simplified, or even 
completely modified, but the name would 
still remain, as beth still continues the He¬ 
brew name for b, and beta the Greek. Our 
letter m, which in Hebrew was called mim, 
water, has still a considerable resemblance 
to the zigzag wavy lin£ which had been 
chosen to represent water, as in the zodiacal 
symbol for Aquarius. The letter o, of 
which the Hebrew name means eye, no 
doubt originally intended to represent that 
organ. While the ancient Greek alphabet 
gave rise to the ordinary Greek alphabet 
and the Latin, the Greek alphabet of later 
times furnished elements for the Coptic, the 
Gothic, and the old Slavic alphabets. The 
Latin characters are now employed by a 
great many nations, such as the Italian, the 
Erench, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the 
English, the Dutch, the German, the Hun¬ 
garian, the Polish, &c., each nation having 
introduced such modifications or additions 
as are necessary to express the sound of the 
language peculiar to it. The Greek alpha¬ 
bet originally possessed only sixteen letters, 
though the Phoenician had twenty-two. 


The original Latin alphabet, as it is found 
in the oldest inscriptions, consisted of twenty- 
one letters; namely, the vowels a, e, i, o, 
and u ( v ), and the consonants b, c, d, f, h, k, 
l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, x, z. The Anglo-Saxon 
alphabet had two characters for the digraph 
th, which were unfortunately not retained 
in later English; it had also the character 
ce. It wanted j, v, y (consonant), and z. The 
German alphabet consists of the same letters 
as the English, but the sounds of some of 
them are different. Anciently certain 
characters called Runic were made use of 
by the Teutonic nations, to which some 
would attribute an origin independent of 
the Greek and Latin alphabets. While the 
alphabets of the west of Europe are derived 
from the Latin, the Russian, which is very 
complete, is based on the Greek, with some 
characters borrowed from the Armenian, 
&c. Among Asiatic alphabets, the Arabian 
(ultimately of Phoenician origin) has played 
a part analogous to that of the Latin in 
Europe, the conquests of Mohammedanism 
having imposed it on the Persian, the 
Turkish, the Hindustani, &c. The Sanskrit 
or Devanagari alphabet is one of the most 
remarkable alphabets of the world. As 
now used it has fourteen characters for the 
vowels and diphthongs, and thirty-three for 
the consonants, besides two other symbols. 
Our alphabet is a very imperfect instrument 
for what it has to perform, being both 
defective and redundant. An alphabet is 
not essential to the writing of a language, 
since ideograms or symbols may be used 
instead, as in Chinese. See Writing. 

Alphe'us, now Rufia , the largest river of 
Peloponnesus, flowing westwards into the 
Ionian Sea. 

Alphon'so, the name of a number of Por¬ 
tuguese and Spanish kings. Among the 
former may be mentioned Alphonso I., the 
Conqueror, first king of Portugal, son of 
Henry of Burgundy, the Conqueror and first 
Count of Portugal; born 1110, fought suc¬ 
cessfully against the Spaniards and the 
Moors, named himself king of Portugal, 
and was as such recognized by the pope; 
died 1185.—Alphonso V., the African, suc¬ 
ceeded his father, Edward I., 1438. Con¬ 
quered Tangiers; died 1481. During his 
reign Prince Henry the Navigator con¬ 
tinued the important voyages of discovery 
already begun by the Portuguese. Under 
him was drawn up an important code of 
laws.—Among kings of Spain may be men¬ 
tioned Alphonso X., king of Castile and 



ALPHONSO 


ALPS. 


Leon, surnamed the Astronomer, the Phi¬ 
losopher, or the Wise; born in 1226, succeeded 
in 1252. Being grandson of Philip of Ho- 
henstaufen, son of Frederick Barbarossa, he 
endeavoured to have himself elected emperor 
of Germany, and in 1257 succeeded in di¬ 
viding the election with Richard, earl of 
Cornwall. On Richard’s death in 1272 he 
again unsuccessfully contested the imperial 
crown. Meantime his throne was endan¬ 
gered by conspiracies of the nobles and the 
attacks of the Moors. The Moors he con¬ 
quered, but his domestic troubles were less 
easily overcome, and he was finally dethroned 
by his son Sancho, and died two years after, 
1284. Alphonso was the most learned prince 
of his age. Under his direction or superin¬ 
tendence were drawn up a celebrated code 
of laws, valuable astronomical tables which 
go under his name ( Alphonsine Tables), the 
first general history of Spain in the Castilian 
tongue, and a Spanish translation of the 
Bible.— Alphonso V. of Aragon, I. of Naples 
and Sicily, born in 1385, was the son of 
Ferdinand I. of Aragon, the throne of which 
he ascended in 1416, ruling also over Sicily 
and the island of Sardinia. Queen Joanna 
of Naples had promised to make him her 
heir, but at her death in 1435 had left her 
dominions to Rene of Anjou. Alphonso now 
proceeded to take possession of Naples by 
force, which he succeeded in doing in 1442, 
and reigned till his death in 1458. He was 
an enlightened patron of literary men, by 
whom, in the latter part of his reign, his 
court was thronged.— Alphonso XII., King 
of Spain, the only son of Queen Isabella 
II. and her cousin Francis of Assisi, was 
born in 1857 and died in 1885. He left 
Spain with his mother when she was 
driven from the throne by the revolution 
of 1868, and till 1874 resided partly in 
France, partly in Austria. In the latter 
year he studied for a time at the English 
military college, Sandhurst, being then 
known as Prince of the Asturias. His mother 
had given up her claims to the throne in 
1870 in his favour, and in 1874 Alphonso 
came forward himself as claimant, and in 
the end of the year was proclaimed by 
General Martinez Campos as king. He now 
passed over into Spain and was enthusias¬ 
tically received, most of the Spaniards being 
by this time tired of the republican govern¬ 
ment, which had failed to put down the 
Carlist party. Alphonso was successful in 
bringing the Carlist struggle to an end (1876), 
and henceforth he reigned with little dis¬ 

117 


turbance. He married first his cousin Maria 
de las Mercedes, daughter of the Duke 
de Montpensier; second, Maria Christina, 
archduchess of Austria, whom he left a 
widow with two daughters, a son being 
born posthumously. 

Alpine Club, an association of English 
gentlemen, originating in 1856 or 1857, 
having as their common bond of union a de¬ 
light in making the ascent of mountains, in 
the Alps or elsewhere, difficult to ascend, 
and in investigating everything connected 
with mountains. Similar associations now 
exist in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and 
France. 

Alpine Crow, Alpine Chough ( Pyrrho - 
corax alpinus), a European bird closely akin 
to the chough of England. 

Alpine Plants, the name given to those 
plants whose habitat is in the neighbourhood 
of the snow, on mountains partly covered 
with it all the year round. As the height 
of the snow-line varies according to the 
latitude and local conditions, so also does 
the height at which these plants grow. The 
mean height for the alpine plants of Central 
Europe is about 6000 feet; but it rises in 
parts of the Alps and in the Pyrenees to 
9000, or even more. The high grounds clear 
of snow among these mountains present a 
very well marked flora, the general char¬ 
acters of the plants being a low dwarfish 
habit, a tendency to form thick turfs, stems 
partly or wholly woody, and large brilliantly- 
coloured and often very sweet-smelling 
flowers. They are also often closely covered 
with woolly hairs. In the Alps of Middle 
Europe the eye is at once attracted by gen¬ 
tians, saxifrages, rhododendrons, primroses 
of different kinds, &c. Ferns and mosses of 
many kinds also characterize these regions. 
Some alpine plants are found only in one 
locality. Considerable success has attended 
the attempt to grow alpine plants in gardens. 

Alpine Warbler (Accentor alpinus), a 
European bird of the same genus as the 
hedge-sparrow. 

Alpin'ia, a genus of plants. See Galaa- 
fjal. 

Alps, the highest and most extensive 
system of mountains in Europe, included 
between lat. 44 J and 48 u N. , and Ion. 5° and 
18° E., covering great part of Northern Italy, 
several departments of France, nearly the 
whole of Switzerland, and a large part of 
Austria, while its extensive ramifications 
connect it with nearly all the mountain sys¬ 
tems of Europe. The culminating peak is 



ALPS. 


Mont Blanc, 15,781 feet high, though the 
true centre is the St. Gothard, or the moun¬ 
tain mass to which it belongs, and from 
whose slopes flow, either directly or by 
affluents, the great rivers of Central Europe, 
the Danube, Rhine, Rhone, and Po. Round 
the northern frontier of Italy the Alps form 
a remarkable barrier, shutting it off at all 
points from the mainland of Europe, so that, 
as a rule, it can only be approached from 
France, Germany, or Switzerland, through 
high and difficult passes. In the west this 
barrier approaches close to the Mediter¬ 
ranean coast, and near Nice there is left a 
free passage into the Italian peninsula be¬ 
tween the mountains and the sea. From 
this point eastward the chain proceeds along 
the coast till it forms a junction with the 
Af ennines. In the opposite direction it 
proceeds north-west, and afterwards north 
to Mont Blanc, on the boundaries of France 
and Italy; it then turns north-east and runs 
generally in this direction to the Gross 
Glockner, in Central Tyrol, between the 
rivers Drave and the Salza, where it divides 
into two branches, the northern proceeding 
north-east towards Vienna, the southern to¬ 
wards the Balkan Peninsula. The principal 
valleys of the Alps run mostly in a direction 
nearly parallel with the principal ranges, 
and therefore east and west. The transverse 
valleys are commonly shorter, and frequently 
lead up through a narrow gorge to a depres¬ 
sion in the main ridge between two adjacent 
peaks. These are the passes or cols , which 
may usually be found by tracing a stream 
which descends from the mountains up to 
its source. 

The Alps in their various great divisions 
receive different names. The Maritime 
Alps, so called from their proximity to the 
Mediterranean, extend westward from their 
junction with the Apennines for a distance 
of about 100 miles; culminating points 
Aiguille de Chambeyron, 11,155 feet, and 
Grand Rioburent, 11,142 feet; principal 
pass, the Col di Tende (6158 feet), which 
was made practicable for carriages by Na¬ 
poleon I. Proceeding northward the next 
group consists of the Cottian Alps, length 
about 60 miles; principal peaks: Monte 
Viso, 12,605 feet; Pic des Serins, 13,462; 
Pelvoux, 12,973. Next come the Graian 
Alps, 50 miles long, with extensive ramifi¬ 
cations in Savoie and Piedmont; principal 
peaks: Aiguille de la Sassiere, 12,326 feet; 
Grand Paradis, 13,300; Grande Casse, 
12,780. To this group belongs Mont Cenis 


(6765 feet), over which a carriage road was 
constructed by Napoleon I., while a railway 
now passes through the mountain by a tun¬ 
nel nearly 8 miles long. These three divi¬ 
sions of the Alps are often classed together 
as the Western Alps, while the portion of 
the system immediately east of this forms 
the Central Alps. The Pennine Alps form 
the loftiest portion of the whole system, 
having Mont Blanc (in France) at one ex¬ 
tremity, and Monte Rosa at the other (60 
miles), and including the Alps of Savoy and 
the Valais. In the east the valley of the up¬ 
per Rhone separates the Pennine Alps from 
the great chain of the Bernese Alps running 
nearly parallel, the great peaks of the two 
ranges being about 20 miles apart. The 
principal heights of the Pennine Alps are 
Mont Blanc, 15,781 feet; Monte Rosa, 
15,217; Mischabelhorner (Dom), 14,935; 
Weisshorn, 14,804 ; Matterhorn, 14,780. In 
the Bernese Alps, the Finsteraarhorn, 
14,026; Aletschhorn, 13,803; Jungfrau, 
13,671. The pass of Great St. Bernard is 
celebrated for its hospice. The most eas¬ 
terly pass is the Simplon, 6595 feet, with a 
carriage road made by Napoleon I. Further 
east are the Lepontine Alps, divided into 
several groups. From this run northward 
and southward numerous streams, the latter 
to the valleys in which lie the lakes Mag- 
giore, Como, &.c. The principal pass is the 
St. Gothard (6936 feet), over which passes 
a carriage road to Italy, while through this 
mountain mass a railway tunnel more than 
9 miles long has been opened. Highest 
peaks: Todi, 11,887 feet; Monte Leone, 
11,696. The Rhcetian Alps, extending east 
to about lat. 12° 30', are the most easterly 
of the Central Alps, and are divided into 
two portions by the Engadine, or valley of 
the Inn, and also broken by the valley of 
the Adige; principal peaks: Piz Bernina, 
13,294 feet; Ortlerspitze, 12,814; Monte 
Adamello, 11,832. The Brenner Pass (4588 
feet), from Verona to Innsbruck, and be¬ 
tween the Central and the Eastern Alps, is 
crossed by a railway. On the railway from 
Innsbruck to the Lake of Constance is the 
Arlberg Tunnel, over 6 miles long. The 
Eastern Alps form the broadest and lowest 
portion of the system, and embrace the 
Noric Alps, the Carnic Alps, the Julian 
A Ips, &c.; highest peak, the Gross Glockner, 
12,405 feet. The height of the south¬ 
eastern continuations of the Alps rapidly 
diminishes, and they lose themselves in 
ranges having nothing in common with the 

118 


ALPS. 


great mountain masses which distinguish 
the centre of the system. 

The Alps are very rich in lakes and 
streams. Among the chief of the former 
are the lakes of Geneva, Constance, Zurich, 
Thun, Brienz, on the north side; on 
the south Maggiore, Como, Lugano, 
Garda, &c. The drainage is carried to the 
North Sea by the Rhine, to the Medi¬ 
terranean by the Rhone, to the Adriatic by 
the Po, to the Black Sea by the Danube. 

In the lower valleys of the Alps the 
mean temperature ranges from 50° to 60°. 
Half-way up the Alps it averages about 
32°—a height which, in the snowy regions, 
it never reaches. But even where the 
temperature is lowest the solar radiation 
produced by the rocks and snow is often 
so great as to raise the photometer to 
120° and even higher. The exhilarating 
and invigorating nature of the climate in 
the upper regions during summer has been 
acknowledged by all. 

In respect to vegetation the Alps have 
been divided into six zones, depending 
on height modified by exposure and 
local circumstances. The first is the 
olive region. This tree flourishes better 
on sheltered slopes of the mountains 
than on the plains of Northern Italy. 
The vine, which bears greater winter 
cold, distinguishes the second zone. On 
slopes exposed to the sun it flourishes to a 
considerable height. The third is called the 
mountainous region. Cereals and deciduous 
trees form the distinguishing features of its 
vegetation. The mean temperature about 
equals that of Great Britain, but the ex¬ 
tremes are greater. The fourth region is 
the sub-Alpine or coniferous. Here are vast 
forests of pines of various species. Most of 
the Alpine villages are in the two last re¬ 
gions. On the northern slopes pines grow 
to 6000, and on the southern slopes to 7000 
feet above the level of the sea. This is also 
the region of the lower or permanent pas¬ 
tures where the flocks are fed in winter. 
The fifth is the pasture region, the term alp 
being used in the local sense of high pasture 
grounds. It extends from the uppermost 
limit of trees to the region of perpetual 
snow. Here there are shrubs, rhododendrons, 
junipers, bilberries, and dwarf willows, &c. 
The sixth zone is the region of perpetual 
snow. The line of snow varies, according to 
seasons and localities, from 8000 to 9500 
feet, but the line is not continuous, being 
often broken in upon. Few flowering plants 

119 


extend above 10,000 feet, but they have been 
found as high as 12,000 feet. 

At this great elevation are found the 
wild goat and the chamois. In summer 
the high mountain pastures are covered 
with large flocks of cattle, sheep, and 
goats, which are in winter removed to a 
lower and warmer level. The marmot, 
and white or Alpine hare, inhabit both 
the snowy and the woody regions. Lower 
down are found the wild-cat, fox, lynx, 
bear, and wolf; the last two are now 
extremely rare. The vulture, eagle, and 
other birds of prey frequent the highest 
elevations, the ptarmigan seeks its food and 
shelter among the diminutive plants that 
border upon the snow-line. Excellent trout 
and other fish are found; but the most 
elevated lakes are, from their low tempera¬ 
ture, entirely destitute of fish. 

The geological structure of the Alps is 
highly involved, and is far, as yet, from 
being thoroughly investigated or under¬ 
stood. In general three zones can be 
distinguished, a central, in which crys¬ 
talline rocks prevail, and two exterior 
zones, in which sedimentary rocks predomi¬ 
nate. The rocks of the central zone 
consist of granite, gneiss, hornblende, mica 
slate, and other slates and schists. In the 
western Alps there are also considerable 
elevations in the central zone that belong to 
the Jurassic (Oolite) and Cretaceous for¬ 
mations. From the disposition of the beds, 
which are broken, tilted, and distorted on a 
gigantic scale, the Alps appear to have been 
formed by a succession of disruptions and 
elevations extending over a very protracted 
period. Among the minerals that are ob¬ 
tained are iron and lead, gold, silver, copper, 
zinc, alum, and coal. 

There are various points of vantage from 
which extensive views of Alpine scenery are 
commanded at the expense of a moderate 
amount of climbing. The Rigi, which can 
now be ascended by railway, is one of these. 
There is an inn at the top, 5905 feet above 
the level of the sea, and 4468 above the Lake 
of Lucerne. A favourite view from hence 
is to watch the sun rise over the Bernese 
Alps. The Becca di Nona (8415 feet), south 
of Aosta, gives, according to some authorities, 
the finest panoramic view to be obtained 
from any summit of the Alps. Among the 
most impressive phenomena are the ava¬ 
lanche and the glacier. The most accessible 
glaciers are those of Aletsch, Chamonix, 
and Zermatt. 


ALPUJARRAS 


ALTAI MOUNTAINS. 


Alpuj arras (al-po-/iar'ras), a district of 
Spain, in Andalusia, between the Sierra 
Nevada and the Mediterranean, mountain¬ 
ous, but with rich and well-cultivated val¬ 
leys yielding grain, vines, olives, and other 
fruits. The inhabitants are Christianized 
descendants of the Moors. 

Alquifou (arki-fo), a sort of load ore 
used by potters as a green varnish or glaze. 

Alsace (al-sas; German, Elsass), before the 
French revolution a province of France, 
on the Rhine, afterwards constituting the 
French departments of Haut- and Bas-Rhin, 
and subsequently to the Franco-Prussian 
war of 1870-71 reunited to Germany, and 
incorporated in the province of Elsass- 
Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine). Alsace is 
generally a level country, though there are 
several ranges of low hills richly wooded. 
The principal river is the Ill. Corn, flax, 
tobacco, grapes, and other fruits are grown. 
Area, 3198 sq. miles; population 1,074,626. 
Alsace was originally a part of ancient Gaul. 
It afterwards became a dukedom of the Ger¬ 
man empire. In 1268, the line of its dukes 
becoming extinct, it was parcelled out to 
several members of the empire. By the 
peace of Westphalia, in 1648, a great part 
of it was ceded to France, which afterwards 
seized the rest of it, this seizure being recog¬ 
nized by the peace of Ryswick, in 1697. 
Henceforth, till their recent successes, the 
Germans used to look with longing eyes on 
Alsace. The inhabitants mostly speak Ger¬ 
man, and are of German race. Strasburg is 
the chief city. The chief productions are 
wine, hemp, flax, tobacco, madder, copper, 
iron, &c. See Alsace-Lorraine. 

Alsace-Lorraine, a province (Reichsland, 
‘imperial territory’) of Germany, on the 
east of France, partly bounded by the Rhine; 
area, 5600 sq. miles, of which Alsace occu¬ 
pies 3198 and Lorraine 2402. It is under 
a lieutenant-governor, and is divided into 
the districts of Lower and Upper Alsace 
and Lorraine, at the head of each beingf a 
president. The three chief towns are 
Strasburg, Miihlhausen, and Metz. Pop. 
1890, 1,603,987, of whom 1,200,000 are 
Catholics and 312,000 Protestants. 

Alsa'tia, formerly a cant name for White- 
friars, a district in London between the 
Thames and Fleet Street, and adjoining 
the Temple, which, possessing certain privi¬ 
leges of sanctuary, became for that reason 
a nest of mischievous characters, who were 
generally obnoxious to the law. These 
privileges were abolished in 1697. The 


name Alsatia is a Latinized form of Alsace, 
which, being on the frontiers of France and 
Germany, was a harbour for necessitous or 
troublesome characters from both countries. 

Al'sen, an island of Prussia on the east 
coast of Schleswig-Holstein, length, 20 miles; 
breadth, from 5 to 7 miles, diversified with 
forests, lakes, well-cultivated fields, orchards, 
and towns. Pop. 22,500. 

A1 Sirat (se'rat), in Mohammedan be¬ 
lief the bridge extending over the abyss of 
hell which must be crossed by every one on 
his journey to heaven. It is finer than a 
hair, as sharp as the edge of a sword, and 
beset with thorns on either side. The 
righteous will pass over with ease and 
swiftness, but the wicked will fall into hell 
below. 

Alstrceme'ria, a genus of South American 
plants, order Amaryllideae, some of them 
cultivated in European greenhouses and 
gardens. A. Salsilla and A. ovata are cul¬ 
tivated for their edible tubers. 

Altaic Languages, a family of languages 
occupying a portion of Northern and Eas¬ 
tern Europe, and nearly the whole of 
Northern and Central Asia, together with 
some other regions, and divided into five 
branches, the Ugrian or Finno-Hungarian, 
Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic. 
Also called Ural-Altaic and Turanian. 

Altai Mountains (al'tl), an important 
Asiatic system on the borders of Siberia 
and Mongolia, partly in Russian and partly 
in Chinese territory, between lat. 46° and 
53° N., Ion. 83° and 91° E , but having great 
eastern extensions. The Russian portion is 
comprised in the governments of Tomsk 
and Semipalatinsk, the Chinese in Dsun- 
garia. The rivers of this region, which are 
large and numerous, are mostly head-waters 
of the Obi and Irtish. The mountain 
scenery is generally grand and interesting. 
The highest summit is Byeluka (‘white 
mountain,’ from its snowy top), height 11,000 
feet. The area covered by perpetual snow 
is very considerable, and glaciers occupy a 
wide extent. In the high lands the winter 
is very severe; but on the whole the climate 
is comparatively mild and is also healthy. 
The vegetation is varied and abundant. 
The mountain forests are composed of 
birch, alder, aspen, fir, larch, stone-pine, 
&c. The wild sheep has here its native 
home, and several kinds of deer occur. The 
Altai is exceedingly rich in minerals, includ¬ 
ing gold, silver, copper, and iron. The name 
Altai means ‘gold mountain.’ The inhabi- 

120 


ALTAMURA 


ALTISCOPE. 



Altars.—1, Assyrian. 2, Grecian. 3, Roman. 


tants are chiefly Russians and Kalmuks. 
The chief town is Barnaul. 

Altamu'ra, a town of South Italy, prov. 
of Bari, at the foot of the Apennines, walled, 
well built, and containing a magnificent 
cathedral. Pop. 20,013. 

Altar (al'tar), any pile or structure raised 
above the ground for receiving sacrifices to 
some divinity. The Greek and Roman al¬ 
tars were various in form, and often highly 
ornamental; in temples they were usually 
placed before the statue of the god. In the 
Jewish ceremonial the altar held an im¬ 
portant place, 
and was asso¬ 
ciated with 
many of the 
most signifi¬ 
cant rites of 
religion. Two 
altars were 
erected in the 
tabernacle in 
the wilderness, 
and the same 
number in the 
temple,accord¬ 
ing to instruc¬ 
tions given to 
Moses in Mt. 

Sinai. These were called the altar of burnt- 
offering and the altar of incense. In some 
sections of the Christian church the com¬ 
munion-table, or table on which the eucharist 
is placed, is called an altar. In the primitive 
church it was a table of wood, but subse¬ 
quently stone and metal were introduced 
with rich ornaments, sculpture, and painting. 
After the introduction of Gothic art the altar 
frequently became a lofty and most elabor¬ 
ate structure. Originally there w r as but one 
altar in a church, but latterly there might be 
several in a large church, the chief or high 
altar standing at the east end. Over an altar 
there is often a painting (an altar-piece), 
and behind it there may be an ornamental 
altar-screen separating the choir from the 
east end of the church. Lights are often 
placed on or near the altar—in English 
churches they are forbidden to be placed 
on it. 

Altazimuth (abbrev. of altitude-azi¬ 
muth), a vertical circle with a telescope so 
arranged as to be capable of being turned 
round horizontally to any point of the com¬ 
pass, and so differing from a transit-circle, 
which is fixed in the meridian. The altazi¬ 
muth is brought to bear upon objects by 

121 


motions affecting their altitude and azi¬ 
muth. Called also Altitude-and-azimuth 
Instrument. 

Altdorf. See Altorf. 

Al'tena, a towm of Prussia, Westphalia, 
40 miles n.n.e. of Cologne; wire-works, 
rolling-mills, chain-works, manufactories of 
needles, pins, thimbles, &c. Pop. 9387. 

Al'tenburg, a town of Germany, capital 
of Saxe-Altenburg, 23 miles south of Leip¬ 
zig. It has some fine streets and many 
handsome edifices, including a splendid 
palace; manufactures of cigars, woollen yarn, 

gloves, hats, 
musical instru¬ 
ments, glass, 
brushes, &c. 
Pop. 26,241. 

Alteratives 
(al'-), medi¬ 
cines, as mer¬ 
cury, iodine, 
&c., which, ad¬ 
ministered in 
small doses, 
gradually in¬ 
duce a change 
in the habit 
or constitution, 
and impercep¬ 
tibly alter disordered secretions and actions, 
and restore healthy functions wdthout pro¬ 
ducing any sensible evacuation by perspira¬ 
tion, purging, or vomiting. 

Alter ego (Latin, ‘another I’), a second 
self, one who represents another in every 
respect. This term w^as formerly given, in 
the official style of the Kingdom of the Two 
Sicilies, to a substitute appointed by the 
king to manage the affairs of the kingdom, 
with full royal power. 

Alter nate, in botany, placed on opposite 
sides of an axis at a different level, as 
leaves.— Alternate generation, the reproduc¬ 
tion of young not resembling their parents, 
but their grandparents,continuously, as in the 
jelly-fishes, Ac. See Generation, Alternate. 

Althse'a, a genus of plants. See Holly¬ 
hock and Marsh-mallow. 

Al'tiscope, an instrument consisting of 
an arrangement of mirrors in a vertical 
framework, by means of which a person is 
enabled to overlook an object (a parapet, 
for instance) intervening between himself 
and any view that he desires to see, the 
picture of the latter being reflected from a 
higher to a lower mirror, where it is seen 
by the observer. 































































ALTITUDE 


ALUM. 


Al'titude, in mathematics the perpendicu¬ 
lar height of the vertex or apex of a plane 
figure or solid above the base. In astronomy 
it is the vertical height of any point or body 
above the horizon. It is measured or esti¬ 
mated by the angle subtended between the 
object and the plane of the horizon, and 
may be either true or apparent. The ap¬ 
parent altitude is that which is obtained 
immediately from observation; the true 
altitude, that which results from correcting 
the apparent altitude, by making allow¬ 
ance for parallax, refraction, &c. 

Altitude-and-azimuth Instrument. See 
Altazimuth. 

Alto, in music, the highest singing voice 
of a male adult, the lowest of a boy or a 
woman, being in the latter the same as con¬ 
tralto. The alto, or counter-tenor, is not a 
natural voice, but a development of the fal¬ 
setto. It is almost confined to English 
singers, and the only music written for it is 
by English composers. It is especially used 
in cathedral compositions and glees. 

Al ton, a town of England, in Hampshire, 
16 miles north-east of Winchester, famous 
for its ale. Pop. 4671. 

Al'ton, a town of the United States, in 
II inois, on the Mississippi near the mouth 
of the Missouri, with a state penitentiary, 
several mills and manufactories, and in the 
neighbourhood limestone and coal. Pop. 
in 1890, 10,294. 

Al'tona, an important commercial city in 
the Prussian province of Schleswig-Hol¬ 
stein, on the right bank of the Elbe, adjoining 
Hamburg, with which it virtually forms one 
city. It is a free port, and its commerce, 
both inland and foreign, is large, being 
quite identified with that of Hamburg. 
Pop. 104,717. 

Altoo'na, a town of the United States, 
in Pennsylvania, at the eastern base of the 
Alleghanies, 244 miles west of Philadel¬ 
phia, with large machine-shops and loco¬ 
motive factories. Pop. in 1890, 30,337. 

Al'torf, a small town of Switzerland, 
capital of the canton of Uri, beautifully 
situated, near the Lake of Luzern, amid 
gardens and orchards, and memorable as the 
place where, according to legend, Tell shot 
the apple from his son’s head. A colossal 
statue of Tell now stands here. Pop. 2900. 

Alto-rilievo (al'to-re-le-a/'vo), high relief, 
a term applied in regard to sculptured 
figures to express that they stand out 
boldly from the background, projecting 
more than half their thickness, without 


being entirely detached. In mezzo-rilievo, 
or middle relief, the projection is one-half, 
and in basso-rilievo, or bas-relief, less than 
one-half. Alto-rilievo is further distin- 



Alto-rilievo—Battle of Centaurs and Lapitliae. 


guished from mezzo-relievo by some portion 
of the figures standing usually quite free 
from the surface on which they are carved, 
while in the latter the figures, though 
rounded, are not detached in any part. 

Altotting (alt-eut'ing), a famous place of 
pilgrimage, in Bavaria, 52 miles E.N.E. of 
Munich, near the Inn, with an ancient 
image of the Madonna (the Black Virgin) 
in a chapel dating from 696, and containing 
a rich treasure in gold and precious stones; 
and another chapel in which Tilly was 
buried. Pop. 3000. 

Altranstadt (alt'-ran-stet), a village of 
Saxony, where a treaty was concluded be¬ 
tween Charles XII., king of Sweden, and 
Augustus, elector of Saxony and king of 
Poland, September 24, 1706, by which the 
latter resigned the crown of Poland. 

Alt'ringham, or Altrincham, a town of 
England, in Cheshire, 8 miles south-west 
of Manchester, remarkably neat and clean, 
and resorted to by invalids: large quan¬ 
tities of fruit and vegetables are raised; 
and there are several industrial works. 
Pop. 12,424. Also a pari. div. of the county. 

Al'truism, a term first employed by the 
French philosopher Comte, to signify devo¬ 
tion to others or to humanity; the opposite 
of selfishness or egoism. 

Altwasser (alt'vas-er), a town of Prus¬ 
sia, in Silesia, 35 miles south-west of Bres¬ 
lau ; here are made porcelain, machinery, 
iron, yarn, mirrors, &c. Pop. 8087. 

ALum, a well-known crystalline, astrin¬ 
gent substance with a sweetish taste, a 

122 











ALUMBAGH-ALVA. 


double sulphate of potassium and aluminium 
with a certain quantity of water of crys¬ 
tallization. It crystallizes in regular 
octahedrons. Its solution reddens vege¬ 
table blues. Exposed to heat its water of 
crystallization is driven off, and it becomes 
light and spongy with slightly corrosive 
properties, and is used as a caustic under 
the name of burnt alum. Alum is prepared 
in Great Britain at Whitby from alum- 
slate, where it forms the cliffs for miles, and 
at Hurlett and Campsie, near Glasgow, 
from bituminous alum-shale and slate-clay, 
obtained from old coal-pits. It is also pre¬ 
pared near Rome from alum-stone. Com¬ 
mon alum is strictly potash alum; other 
two varieties are soda alum and ammonia 
alum, both similar in properties. The im¬ 
portance of alum in the arts is very great, 
and its annual consumption is immense. It 
is employed to increase the hardness of 
tallow, to remove gi’easiness from printers’ 
cushions and blocks in calico manufactories; 
in dyeing it is largely used as a mordant. 
It is also largely used in the composition of 
crayons, in tannery, and in medicine (as an 
astringent and styptic). Wood and paper 
are dipped in a solution of alum to render 
them less combustible. 

Alumbagh (a-lam-bag'), a palace and 
connected buildings in Hindustan, about 
4 miles south of Lucknow. On the out¬ 
break of the Indian mutiny it was occu¬ 
pied by the revolted Sepoys, and converted 
into a fort. On the 23d of September, 1857, 
it was captured by the British, and during 
the following winter a British garrison, 
under Sir James Outram, held out here, 
though repeatedly attacked by overwhelm¬ 
ing numbers of the rebels, till in March, 
1858, it was finally relieved. Sir Henry 
Havelock was buried within the grounds. 

Alu'mina (Ah0 3 ), the single oxide of the 
metal aluminium. As found native it is 
called corundum, when crystallized ruby or 
sapphire,when amorphous emery. It is next to 
the diamond in hardness. In combination 
with silica it is one of the most widely dis¬ 
tributed of substances, as it enters in large 
quantity into the composition of granite, 
traps, slates, schists, clays, loams, and other 
rocks. The porcelain clays and kaolins 
contain about half their weight of this 
earth, to which they owe their most valu¬ 
able properties. It has a strong affinity 
for colouring matters, which causes it to be 
employed in the preparation of the colours 
called lakes in dyeing and calico-printing. 


It combines with the acids and forms nu¬ 
merous salts, the most important of which 
are the sulphate (see Alum) and acetate, 
the latter of extensive use as a mordant. 

Alumin'ium (symbol Al, atomic weight 
27'0), a metal discovered in 1827, but no¬ 
where found native, though as the base of 
alumina (which see) it is abundantly distri¬ 
buted. The mineral cryolite —a fluoride of 
aluminium and sodium—which is brought 
from Greenland, is one of the chief sources of 
aluminium. It is a shining white metal, of 
a colour between silver and platinum, very 
light, weighing less than glass, and about 
one-fourth of silver (specific gravity, 2'50 
cast, 2'67 hammered), not liable to tarnish 
nor undergo oxidation in the air, very duc¬ 
tile and malleable, and remarkably sonor¬ 
ous. It forms several useful alloys with 
iron and copper; one of the latter ( alumin¬ 
ium gold) much resembles gold, and is 
made into cheap trinkets. Another, known 
as aluminium bronze, possesses great hard¬ 
ness and tenacity. Spoons, tea and coffee 
pots, dish-covers, musical and mathematical 
instruments, trinkets, &c., are made of 
aluminium. 

Alum-root, the name given in America to 
two plants on account of the remarkate 
astringency of their roots, which are used for 
medical purposes : Geranium maculdtum 
and Heuchera americdna (nat. order Saxi- 
fragaceae). 

Alum-slate, Alum-schist, a» slaty rock 
from which much alum is prepared; colour 
grayish, bluish, or iron-black ; often pos¬ 
sessed of a glossy or shining lustre; chiefly 
composed of clay (silicate of alumina), with 
variable proportions of sulphide of iron (iron- 
pyrites), lime, bitumen, and magnesia. 

Alum-stone, a mineral of a grayish or 
yellowish-white colour, approaching to 
earthy in its composition, from which (in 
Italy) is obtained a very pure alum by 
simply subjecting it to roasting and lixivi- 
ation. 

Alun'no, Niccolo (real name Niccolh di 
Liberatore), an Italian painter of the fif¬ 
teenth century, the founder of the Umbrian 
School; born in Foligno about 1430, died 
1502. 

Al'va, a town of Scotland, Stirlingshire, 
7 miles north-east of Stirling, in a detached 
portion of the county, surrounded by Clack¬ 
mannan and Perthshire; manufactures of 
woollen shawls, plaids, &c. Pop. 4961. 

Al'va, or Al'ba, Ferdinand Alvarez, 
Duke of, Spanish statesman and general 



ALVARADO 


AMADEUS. 


under Charles V. and Philip II.; was born 
in 1508; early embraced the military career, 
and fought in the wars of Charles V. in 
France, Italy, Africa, Hungary, and Ger¬ 
many. He is more especially remembered 
for his bloody and tyrannical government 
of the Netherlands (1567-73), which had 
revolted, and which he was commissioned 
by Philip II. to reduce to entire subjection 
to Spain. Among his first proceedings was 
to establish the “Council of Blood,” a tri¬ 
bunal which condemned, without discrimi¬ 
nation, all whose opinions were suspected, 
and whose riches were coveted. The pre¬ 
sent and absent, the living and the dead, 
were subjected to trial and their property 
confiscated. Many merchants and mechanics 
emigrated to England; people by hundreds 
of thousands abandoned their country. The 
Counts of Egmont and Horn, and other men 
of rank, were executed, and William and 
Louis of Orange had to sa\e themselves in 
Germany. The most oppressive taxes were 
imposed, and trade was brought completely 
to a standstill. As a reward for his services 
to the faith the pope presented him with 
a consecrated hat and sword, a distinc¬ 
tion previously conferred only on princes. 
Resistance was only quelled for a time, and 
soon the provinces of Holland and Zealand 
revolted against his tyranny. A fleet which 
was fitted out at his command was anni¬ 
hilated, and he was everywhere met with 
insuperable’ courage. Hopeless of finally 
subduing the country he asked to be recalled, 
and accordingly, in December, 1573, Alva 
left the country, in which, as he himself 
boasted, he had executed 18,000 men. He 
was received with distinction in Madrid, 
but did not long enjoy his former credit. 
He had the honour, however, before his 
death (which took place in 1582) of reducing 
all Portugal to subjection to his sovereign. 
It is said of him that during sixty years 
of warfare he never lost a battle and was 
never taken by surprise. 

Alvarado (al-va-ra'cZo), Pedro de, one of 
tne Spanish ‘conquistadors,’ was born to¬ 
wards the end of the fifteenth century, and 
died in 1541. Having crossed the Atlantic 
he was associated (1519) with Cortez in his 
expedition to conquer Mexico; and was in¬ 
trusted with important operations. In July, 
1520, during the disastrous retreat from the 
capital after the death of Montezuma, the 
perilous command of the rear-guard was 
assigned to Alvarado. On his return to 
Spain he was received with honour by 


Charles V., who made him governor of 
Guatemala, which he had himself conquered. 
To this was subsequently added Honduras. 
He continued to add to the Spanish domin¬ 
ions in America till his death. 

Alvarez (al-va-reth'), Don Jos£, a Span¬ 
ish sculptor; born 1768, died 1827. His 
works are characterized by truth to nature, 
dignity and feeling, one of the chief repre¬ 
senting a scene in the defence of Saragossa. 

Alve'olus, one of the sockets in which 
the teeth of mammals are fixed. Hence 
alveolar arches, the parts of the jaws con¬ 
taining these sockets. 

Alwar (al-war'), a state of north-western 
Hindustan, inRajputana; area, 3024 square 
miles; surface generally elevated and rug¬ 
ged, and much of it of an arid description, 
though water is generally found on the plains 
by digging a little beneath the surface, and 
the means of irrigation being thus provided, 
the soil, though sandy, is highly productive. 
This semi-independent state has as its ruler 
a rajah with a revenue of about £200,000; 
military force, about 5000 infantry and 
2000 cavalry. Pop. 682,926. —Alwar, the 
capital, is situated at the base of a rocky 
hill crowned by a fort, 80 miles s.s.w. of 
Delhi, surrounded by a moat and rampart, 
and poorly built, but with fine surround¬ 
ings; contains the rajah’s palace and a few 
other good buildings. Pop. 49,867. 

Alys'sum, a genius of cruciferous plants, 
several species of which are cultivated on 
account of their white or yellow coloured 
flowers; madwort. 

Amad'avat (Estrilda amanddva), a small 
Indian singing bird allied to the finches 
and buntings ; sober-coloured, often kept in 
cages. 

Amade'us, the name of several counts of 
Savoy. The first was the son of Humbert 
I., and succeeded him in 1048, dying about 
1078; others who have occupied an impor¬ 
tant place in history are the following:— 
Amadeus V., ‘the Great,' succeeded in 
1285, gained distinguished honour in de¬ 
fending Rhodes against the Turks, increased 
his possessions by marriage and war, was 
made a prince of the empire, died in 1323. 
—Amadeus VIII. succeeded his father, 
Amadeus VII., in 1391, and had his title 
raised to that of duke by the Emperor 
Sigismund. He was chosen regent of Pied¬ 
mont; but after this elevation retired from 
his throne and family into a religious house. 
He now aspired to the papacy, and was 
chosen by the Council of Basel (1439), be- 

124 



AMADEUS 

coming pope under the name of Felix V., 
though he had never taken holy orders. 
He resigned in 1449, and died in 1451. 

Amade us, Duke of Aosta, second son of 
Victor Emanuel of Italy, and brother of the 
present king, was born in 1845, and was 
chosen by the Cortes King of Spain in 
1870, Queen Isabella having had to leave 
the country in 1868. His position was far 
from comfortable, however, and perceiving 
that, as a member of a foreign dynasty he 
had little hope of becoming acceptable to 
all parties in the state, he abdicated in 
1873 and returned to Italy. 

Amade'us, Lake, a large salt lake or 
salt swamp nearly in the centre of Aus¬ 
tralia. 

Amadis, a name belonging to a number 
of heroes in the romances of chivalry, Am¬ 
adis de Gaul being the greatest among 
them, and represented as the progenitor of 
the whole. The Spanish series of Amadis 
romances is the oldest. It is comprised in 
fourteen books, of which the first four narrate 
the adventures of Amadis de Gaul, this por¬ 
tion of the series having originated about 
the end of the thirteenth or beginning of 
the fourteenth century, and the subsequent 
books being added by various hands. An 
abridged English translation of Amadis of 
Gaul was published by Southey in 1803. 

Amadou (am'a-do), a name of several 
fungi, genus Polyporus, of a leathery ap¬ 
pearance, growing on trees. See German 
Tinder. 

Amager (am'a-ger), a small Danish 
island in the Sound, opposite Copenhagen, 
part of which is situated on it; rural pop. 
16,000. 

Amako'sa, one of the Kaffir tribes of S. 
Africa. 

Amalasun'tha, daughter of Theodoric, 
king of the Ostrogoths, and after his death 
regent of Italy for her son. She was able 
but unscrupulous, and was put to death by 
her second husband, 534 a.d. 

Amal'ekites, a Semitic race occupying 
the peninsula between Egypt and Palestine, 
named after a grandson of Esau. They 
were denounced by Moses for their hostility 
to the Israelites during their journey 
through the wilderness, and they seem to 
have been all but exterminated by Saul and 
David. 

Amal'fi, a seaport in Southern Italy, on 
the Gulf of Salerno, 23 miles from Naples, 
the seat of a bishop; formerly a place of 
great commercial importance, in the middle 

125 


AMARANTHACEA2. 

ages enjoying a republican constitution of 
its own. Here arose the Amalfian Code 
of maritime law. Pop. 7737. 

Amal'gam, a name applied to the alloys 
of mercury with the other metals. One of 
them is the amalgam of mercury with tin, 



The Cathedral, Amalfi. 


which is used to silver looking-glasses. 
Mercury unites very readily with gold and 
silver at ordinary temperatures, and advan¬ 
tage is taken of this to separate them from 
their ores, the process being called amal¬ 
gamation. The mercury being properly 
applied dissolves and combines with the 
precious metal and separates it from the 
waste matters, and is itself easily driven off 
by heat. 

Amani'ta, a genus of fungi, one species 
of which A. muscaria , or fly-agaric, is 
extremely poisonous. 

Ama'nus, a branch of the Taurus Moun¬ 
tains in Asia Minor. 

Amarantha'cese, the amaranths, a nat. 
order of apetalous plants, chiefly inhabiting 
tropical countries, where they are often 
troublesome weeds. They are remarkable 
for the white or sometimes reddish scales 
of which their flowers are composed. Am- 
aranthus, the typical genus, comprises A. 
caudatus, or love-lies-bleeding, a common 
plant in gardens, with pendulous racemes of 















































AMARAPURA-AMAZON. 


crimson flowers; and A. hypochondriacus, or 
princes’ feather. The blossoms keep their 
bloom after being plucked and dried (hence 
the name: Gr. a, not, and mara ind, to 
wither.) 

Amarapura (a-ma-ra-pd'ra), a deserted 
city, once the capital of the Burmese Em¬ 
pire, on the left bank of the Irawaddy, 10 
miles north-east of Ava. In 1810 it was 
completely destroyed ! v firs, in 1839 it 
was visited by a destructive earthquake. 
In 1857 the seat of government was re- 
moveu to Mandalay. The population in 
1800 was 175,000. 

Amaryllida'cese, an order of monocotyle- 
donous plants, generally bulbous, occasion¬ 
ally with a tall, cylindrical, woody stem (as 
in Agave); with a highly coloured flower, 
six stamens, and an inferior three-celled 
ovary; natives of Europe and most of the 
warmer parts of the world. The order 
includes the snowdrop, the snow-flake, the 
daffodil, the belladonna-lily (belonging to 
the typical genus Amaryllis), the so-called 
Guernsey-lily (probably a native of Japan), 
the Brunsvigias, the blood-flowers (Hteman- 
thus) of the Cape of Good Hope, different 
species of Narcissus, Agave (American aloe), 
&e. Many are highly prized in gardens 
and hothouses; the bulbs of some are 
strongly poisonous. 

Amasia (a-ma-se'a), a town in the north 
of Asia Minor, on the Irmak, 60 miles from 
the Black Sea, surmounted by a rocky 
height in which is a ruined fortress; has 
numerous mosques, richly-endowed Moham¬ 
medan schools, and a trade in wine, silk, &c. 
Amasia was a residence of the ancient kings 
of Pontus. Pop. 25,000. 

Ama'sis, king of Egypt from 569 to 526 
B.C., obtained the throne by rebelling 
against his predecessor Apries, and is chiefly 
known from his friendship for the Greeks, 
and his wise government of the kingdom, 
which, under him, was in the most prosper¬ 
ous condition. 

Amati (a-ma'te), a family of Cremona 
who manufactured violins in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries. Andrea (about 
1540-1600) was the founder of the business, 
which was carried on by his sons Geronimo 
and Antonio, and by Niccolo the son of 
Geronimo. Most of the violins made by 
them are of comparatively small size and 
flat model, and the tone produced by the 
fourth or G string is somewhat thin and 
sharp. Many of Niccolo Amati's violins 
are, however, of a larger size and have all 


the fulness and intensity of tone character¬ 
istic of those manufactured by Stradivario 
and Guarnerio. 

Amatit'lan, a town in Central America, 
state of Guatemala, about 15 miles south 
of the city of Guatemala, a busy modern 
town, the inhabitants of which are actively 
engaged in the cochineal trade. There is a 
small lake of same name close to the town. 
Pop. 12,000. 

Amauro'sis (Greek amauros, dark), a 
species of blindness, formerly called gutta- 
serena (the ‘drop serene,’ as Milton, whose 
blindness was of this sort, called it), caused 
by disease of the nerves of vision. The 
most frequent causes are a long-continued 
direction of the eye on minute objects, long 
exposure to a bright light, to the fire of a 
forge, to snow, or irritating gases, overful¬ 
ness of blood, disease of the brain, &c. If 
taken in time it may be cured or mitigated; 
but confirmed amaurosis is usually incur¬ 
able. 

Amaxichi (a-maks'e-he), the chief town 
and seaport of Santa Maura (Leukadia), 
one of the Ionian Isles, the seat of a Greek 
bishop; manufactures cotton and leather. 
Pop. 5500. 

Am'azon, Am'azons, ariverof South Ame¬ 
rica, the largest in the world, formed by a 
great number of sources which rise in the 
Andes; the two head branches being the 
Tunguragua or Marafion and the Ucayale, 
both rising in Peru, the former from Lake 
Lauricocha, in lat. 10° 29' s., the latter 
formed by the Apurimac and Urubamba, 
the head-waters of which are between lat. 
14° and 16° s.; general course north of east; 
length including windings between 3000 
and 4000 miles; area of drainage basin 
2,300,000 sq. miles. It enters the Atlantic 
under the equator by a mouth 200 miles wide, 
divided into two principal and several smal¬ 
ler arms by the large island Marajo, and a 
number of smaller islands. In its upper 
course navigation is interrupted by rapids, 
but from its mouth upwards for a distance 
of 3300 miles (mostly in Brazil) there is no 
obstruction. It receives the waters of about 
200 tributaries, 100 of which are navigable, 
and seventeen of these 1000 to 2300 miles 
in length; northern tributaries: Santiago, 
Morona, Pasta^a, Tigre, Napo, Putumayo, 
Japura, Bio Negro (the Cassiquiare con¬ 
nects this stream with the Orinoco), &c.; 
southern: Huallaga, Ucayale, Javari, Jutay, 
Jurua, Coary, Purus, Madeira, Tapajos, 
Xingu, &c. At Tabatinga where it enter* 

126 



AMAZONAS-AMBASSADOR. 


Brazilian territory, the breadth is 1| mile; 
below the mouth of the Madeira it is 
3 miles wide, and where there are islands 
often as much as 7; from the sea to the 
Rio Negro, 750 miles in a straight line, the 
depth is nowhere less than 30 fathoms; up 
to the junction of the Ucayale there is 
depth sufficient for the largest vessels. The 
Amazonian water system affords some 50,000 
miles of river suitable for navigation. The 
rapidity of the river is considerable, especi¬ 
ally during the rainy season (January to 
June), when it is subject to floods; but 


there is no great fall in its course. The tides 
reach up as far as 400 miles from its mouth. 
The singular phenomenon of the bore, or as 
it is called on the Amazon the pororoca, 
occurs at the mouth of the river at spring- 
tides on a grand scale. The river swarms 
with alligators, turtles, and a great variety of 
fish. The country through which it flows 
is extremely fertile, and is mostly covered 
with immense forests; it must at some 
future time support a numerous population, 
and be the theatre of a busy commerce. 
Steamers and other craft ply on the river, 



the chief centre of trade being Para, at its 
mouth. The Amazon was discovered by 
Yanez Pin£on in 1500, but the stream was 
not navigated by any European till 1540, 
when Francis Orellana descended it. Orel¬ 
lana stated that he found on its banks a 
nation of armed women, and this circum¬ 
stance gave the name to the river. 

Amaz'onas, the largest province of Brazil, 
traversed by the Amazon and its tributaries; 
area, 753,000 sq. miles; pop. 80,000. 

Am'azons, according to an ancient Greek 
tradition, the name of a community of 
women, who permitted no men to reside 
among them, fought under the conduct of a 
queen, and long constituted a formidable 
state. They were said to burn off the right 
breast that it might not impede them in the 
use of the bow—a legend that arose from 
the Greeks supposing the name was from 
a, not, mazos, breast. It is probably from 
a, together, and mazos, breast, the name 
meaning therefore sisters. Several nations 
of Amazons are mentioned, the most famous 
being those who dwelt in Pontus, who built 
Ephesus and other cities. Their queen, 

127 


Hippolyta, was vanquished by Hercules. 
They attacked Attica in the time of The¬ 
seus. They came to the assistance of Troy 
under their queen, Penthesilea, who was 
slain by Achilles. 

Amazu'lu, a branch of the Zulu Kaffir 
race. See Zulus. 

Amba'la, Umball'a, a town of India, in 
the Punjab, in an open plain 3 miles from 
the Ghaggar, consisting of an old and a new 
portion, with a flourishing trade in grain 
and other commodities. The military can¬ 
tonment is several miles distant. Total 
pop. 67,463. 

Ambale'ma, a town of S. America, Colom¬ 
bia, on the Magdalena; the centre of an im¬ 
portant tobacco district. Pop. 6000. 

Am'baree, a fibre similar to jute largely 
used in India, obtained from Hibiscus can- 
nabinus. 

Ambas'sador, a minister of the highest 
rank, employed by one prince or state at 
the court of another to manage the public 
concerns, or support the interests of his own 
prince or state, and representing the pow r er 
and dignity of his sovereign or state. Am- 










AMBATCH - 

bassadors are ordinary when they reside 
permanently at a foreign court, or extra¬ 
ordinary when they are sent on a special 
occasion. When ambassadors extraordi¬ 
nary have full powers, as of concluding 
peace, making treaties, and the like, they 
are called plenipotentiaries. Ambassadors 
are often called simply ministers. Envoys 
are ministers employed on special occasions, 
and are of less dignity than ambassadors. 
The United States, until 1893, had never 
sent an agent of the diplomatic rank of am¬ 
bassador. They had been represented by 
ministers-plenipotentiary. In that year 
the president was authorized to raise repre¬ 
sentatives to foreign governments to the 
rank of ambassador when notified that their 
representatives to the United States were 
to be likewise exalted. 

Am'batch (Herminiera elaphroxylon), a 
thorny leguminous shrub with j'ellow flow¬ 
ers growing in the shallows of the Upper 
Nile and other rivers of tropical Africa. 

Amba'to, a town of Ecuador, on the side 
of Chimborazo, 70 miles south of Quito. 
Pop. 12,000. 

Am'ber, a semi-mineral substance of resi¬ 
nous composition, a sort of fossil resin, the 
produce of extinct Conifer*. It is usually 
of yellow or reddish-brown colour; brittle; 
yields easily to the knife; is translucent, 
and possessed of a resinous lustre. Specific 
gravity, 1'065. It burns with a yellow 
flame, emitting a pungent aromatic smoke, 
and leaving a light carbonaceous residue, 
which is employed as the basis of the 
finest black varnishes. By friction it be^ 
comes strongly electric. It is found in 
masses from the size of coarse sand to that 
of a man’s head, and occurs in beds of bitu¬ 
minous wood situated upon the shores of 
the Baltic and Adriatic Seas; also in Po¬ 
land, France, Italy, and Denmark. It is 
often washed up on the Prussian shores of 
the Baltic, and is also obtained by fishing 
for it with nets. Sometimes it is found on 
the east coast of Bi'itain, in gravel pits 
round London, also in the United States. 

Am'berg, a town of south Germany, in 
Bavaria, on the Yils, well built, with a 
Gothic church of the fifteenth century, royal 
palace, town-house, &c.; manufactures of 
iron-wares, stone-ware, tobacco, beer, vine¬ 
gar, and arms. Pop. 15,705. 

Am'bergris, a substance derived from the 
intestines of the sperm-whale, and found 
floating or on the shore; yellowish or black¬ 
ish white; very light; melts at 140°, and is 


- AMBOYNA. 

entirely dissipated on red-hot coals; is sol¬ 
uble in ether, volatile oils, and partially in 
alcohol, and is chiefly composed of a pecu¬ 
liar fatty substance. Its odour is very 
agreeable, and hence it is used as a perfume. 

Ambidex'trous, having the faculty of 
using the left hand as effectively as the 
right. 

Ambleteuse (an-bl-teuz), a small seaport 
of France, 6 miles from Boulogne. Here 
James II. landed on his flight from England 
in 1688; and from its harbour Napoleon I. 
prepared to despatch a flotilla of flat-bot¬ 
tomed boats for the invasion of Britain. 

Amblyop'sis, a genus of blind fishes, con¬ 
taining only one species, A. spelceus , found 
in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 

Am'blyopy, dulness or obscurity of eye¬ 
sight without any apparent defect in the 
organs; the first stage of amaurosis. 

Am'bo, AM'BON,in early Christian churches 
a kind of raised desk or pulpit, sometimes 



Ambo, Church of San Lorenzo, Rome. 


richly ornamented, from which certain parts 
of the service were read, or discourses 
delivered, there being sometimes two in one 
church. 

Amboina. See Amboyna. 

Amboise (an-bwaz), a town of France, 
dep. Indre-et-Loire, 12 miles east of Tours, 
on the Loire, with an antique castle, the 
residence of several French kings, and manu¬ 
factures of files and rasps. Pop. 4216. 

Amboy'na, Amboina, or Apon, one of the 
Molucca Islands in the Indian Archipelago, 
close to the large island of Ceram; area, 
about 280 square miles. Here is the seat of 

128 








































AMBOYNA WOOD-AMBULANCE. 


government of the Dutch residency or pro¬ 
vince of Amboyna, which includes also 
Ceram, Booro, &c. Its surface is generally 
hilly or mountainous, its general aspect 
beautiful, and its climate on the whole 
salubrious, but it is not unfrequently visited 
by earthquakes. It affords a variety of 
useful trees, including the cocoa-nut and 
sago palms. Cloves and nutmegs are the 
staple productions. The soil in the valleys 
and along the shores is very fertile, but a 
large portion remains uncultivated. The 
natives are mostly of Malayan race. The 
capital, also called Amboyna, is situated on 
the Bay of Amboyna, and is well built and 
defended by a citadel. The streets are 
planted on each side with rows of fruit-trees. 
It is a free port. Bop. 10,500. In 1607 
Amboyna and the other Moluccas were 
taken by the Dutch from the Portuguese, 
and it was for some years the seat of govern¬ 
ment of the Dutch East Indies. Trade 
with the Moluccas was secured to the Brit¬ 
ish by treaty in 1619, but the British estab¬ 
lishment was destroyed and several persons 
massacred in 1623, an outrage for which no 
satisfaction was obtained till 1654 by Crom¬ 
well. Amboyna was taken by the British 
in 1796 and 1810, but each time restored 
to the Dutch. Pop. 30,000. 

Amboyna Wood, a beautiful curled orange 
or brownish coloured wood brought from 
the Moluccas, yielded by Pterospermum 
indicum. 

Ambra'cia. See Arta. 

Am'brose, Saint, a celebrated father of 
the church; born in a.d. 333 or 334, pro¬ 
bably at Treves, where his father was pre¬ 
fect; died in 397. He was educated at 
Home, studied law, practised as a pleader 
at Milan, and in 369 was appointed gover¬ 
nor of Liguria and AEmilia (North Italy). 
His kindness and wisdom gained him the 
esteem and love of the people, and in 374 
he was unanimously called to the bishopric 
of Milan, though not yet baptized. For a 
time he refused to accept this dignity, but 
he had to give way, and at once ranged 
himself against the Arians. In his strug¬ 
gles against the Arian heresy he was op¬ 
posed by Justina, mother of Valentinian II., 
and for a time by the young emperor him¬ 
self, together with the courtiers and the 
Gothic troops. Backed by the people of 
Milan, however, he felt strong enough to 
deny the Arians the use of a single church 
in the city, although Justina, in her son’s 
name, demanded that two should be given 
vol. I. 129 


up. He had also to carry on a war with 
paganism, Symmachus, the prefect of the 
city, an eloquent orator, having endea¬ 
voured to restore the worship of heathen 
deities. In 390, on account of the ruthless 
massacre at Thessalonica ordered by the 
emperor Theodosius, he refused him entrance 
into the church of Milan for eight months. 
The later years of his life were devoted to 
the more immediate care of his see. His 
writings, which are numerous, show that 
his theological knowledge extended little 
beyond an acquaintance with the works of 
the Greek fathers. He wrote Latin hymns, 
but the Te Deum Laudamus, which has 
been ascribed to him, was written a century 
later. He introduced the Ambrosian Chant , 
a mode of singing more monotonous than 
the Gregorian which superseded it. He 
also compiled a form of ritual known by his 
name. 

Ambro'sia, in Greek mythology the food 
of the gods, as nectar was their drink 

Ambrosian Chant. See Ambrose. 

Ambrosian Library, a public library in 
Milan founded by the cardinal archbishop 
Federigo Borromeo, a relation of St. Charles 
Borromeo, and opened in 1609; now con¬ 
taining 160,000 printed books and many 
MSS. It was named in honour of St. Am¬ 
brose, the patron saint of Milan. 

Am'bry, a niche or recess in the wall of 
ancient churches near the altar, fitted with 
a door and used for keeping the sacred 
utensils, &c. 

Ambula'cral System, the locomotive ap¬ 
paratus of the Echinodermata (sea-urchins, 
star-fishes, &c.), the most important feature 
of which is the protrusible tube-feet that 
the animals can at will dilate with water 
and thus move forward. 

Am'bulance, a hospital establishment 
which accompanies an army in its move¬ 
ments in the field for the purpose of provid¬ 
ing assistance and surgical treatment to the 
soldiers wounded in battle. The name is 
often given to one of the carts, wagons, or 
litters used to transfer the wounded from 
the spot where they fell to the hospital. 
One form of ambulance wagon is a strong 
but light vehicle with an upright frame, 
from which two stretchers are slung from 
the top for the accommodation of those 
most severely wounded; seats before and 
behind are provided for those suffering from 
less serious wounds. The hospital chests, 
containing surgical instruments, bandages, 
splints, &c., are placed in the bottom of the 



AMELAN CHIER 


AMERICA. 


wagon or lashed to its under surfaces. A 
thorough ambulance system in connection 
with armies in the field is quite of recent 
introduction. A training in ambulance 
work is now being recognized as of impor¬ 
tance beyond the field of military affairs, 
and as being of the utmost service where- 
ever serious accidents are likely to happen, 
as, for instance, in connection with large 
industrial establishments. 

Amelan'chier (-ke-er), a genus of small 
trees natives of Europe and N. America, 
allied to the medlar. A. vulgaris , long culti¬ 
vated in English gardens, has showy white 
flowers; A. Botryapium (grape-pear) and 
A. ovalis, American species, yield pleasant 
fruits. 

Ameland (a'me-lant), an island off the 
north coast of Holland, 13 miles long and 
3 broad; flat; inhabitants (about 2000 in 
number) chiefly engaged in fishing and 
agriculture. 

Amelie-les-Bains (a-ma-le-la-ban ), a 
village of France, dep. Pyrenees.-Orientales, 
frequented as a winter residence for inva¬ 
lids, and for its warm sulphureous springs. 

Amen (a-men'), a Hebrew word, signifying 
‘verily,’ ‘truly,’ transferred from the reli¬ 
gious language of the Jews to that of the 
Christians, and used at the end of prayers as 
equivalent to ‘so be it,’ ‘may this be granted.’ 

Amend'ment, a proposal brought forward 
in a meeting of some public or other body, 
either in order to get an alteration intro¬ 
duced on some proposal already before the 
meeting, or entirely to overturn such pro¬ 
posal. When amendments are made in 
either House of Congress upon a bill which 
passed the other, the bill, as amended, 
must be sent back to the other House. 
The Senate may amend money bills passed 
by the House of Representatives, but can¬ 
not originate such bills. Art. V. of the 
Constitution of the United States contains 
a provision for its amendment. 

Ameno'phis (or Amenhotef) III., a king of 
ancient Egypt about 1500 B.C.; warred suc¬ 
cessfully against Syrians and Ethiopians, 
built magnificent temples and palaces at 
Thebes, where the so-called Memnon statue 
is a statue of this king. 

Amenorrhoe'a, absence or suspension of 
menstruation. The former may arise from 
general debility or from defective develop¬ 
ment, the latter from exposure to cold, from 
attacks of fever or other ailment, violent 
excitement, &c. 

Amenta'cese, an order of plants having 


their flowers arranged in amenta or cat¬ 
kins ; now broken up into several orders, 
the chief of which are Betulacese (the 
birch), Salicinese (the willow), Balsamifluae 
(the liquidambar), Plataneae (the plane), 
and Cupuliferse (the 
nut). 

Anien'tia, imbe¬ 
cility from birth, 
especially when ex¬ 
treme; idiocy. 

Amen’turn, in 
botany, that kind of 
inflorescence which 
is commonly known 
as a catkin (as in 
the birch or willow), 
consisting of uni¬ 
sexual apetalous 
flowers in the axil 
of scales or bracts. 

Amer'ica, or the 
New World, the largest of the great divi¬ 
sions of the globe except Asia, is washed 
on the west by the Pacific, on the east 
by the Atlantic, on the north by the Arctic 
Ocean, on the south tapers to a point. 
On the north-west it approaches within 
about 50 miles of Asia, while on the 
north - east the island of Greenland ap¬ 
proaches within 370 miles of the European 
island Iceland; but in the south the dis¬ 
tance between the American mainland and 
Europe or Africa is very great. Extreme 
points of the continent — north, Boothia 
Felix, at the Strait of Bellot, lat. 72° N.; 
south, Cape Horn, lat. 56° s.; west, Cape 
Prince of Wales, Ion. 168° w.; east, Point 
de Guia, Ion. 35° w. America as a whole 
forms the two triangular continents of 
North and South America, united by the 
narrow Isthmus of Panama, and having an 
entire length of about 10,000 miles; a maxi¬ 
mum breadth (in North America) of 3500 
miles; a coast line of 44,000 miles; and a 
total area, including the islands, of nearly 
16,000,000, of which N. America contains 
about 9,000,000 sq. miles. South America 
is more compact in form than N. America, 
in this respect resembling Africa, while N. 
America more resembles Europe. Between 
the two on the east side is the great basin 
which comprises the Gulf of Mexico, the 
Caribbean Sea, and the West India Islands. 
Like Europe also N. America possesses 
numerous islands, while those of S. Ame¬ 
rica are less important and confined almost 
to the southern extremity. 

130 



Willow (Salix fragilis), male 
and female, with separate 
flowers. 




J 9 



LreVoia & Co. Philadelphia 
































































■ 












. 



































' 























' 























AMERICA. 


Three-fourths of the area of America is 
comparatively flat, and this portion of the 
surface is bounded on the west by lofty 
mountain systems which stretch continu¬ 
ously from north to south between the ex¬ 
tremities of the continent, generally at no 
great distance from the west shore. In North 
America the Rocky Mountains, a broad 
series of masses partly consisting of plateaux, 
form the most important portion of the ele¬ 
vated surface, being continued southward 
in the mountains and table-land of Mexico 
and the ranges of Central America. Sepa¬ 
rated by depressions from the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains proper, and running close to and parallel 
with the western coast, are several lofty 
ranges (Sierra Nevada, Cascade Mountains, 
&c.). Near the eastern coast, and forming 
an isolated mass, are the Appalachians, a 
system of much inferior magnitude. The 
loftiest mountains in N. America are Wran¬ 
gell (Alaska), 20,000 ft.; Mount St. Elias, 
19,500; and Popocatepetl, 17,783 ft.—all 
volcanoes. The depression of the Isthmus 
of Panama (about 260 feet) forms a natural 
separation between the systems of the north 
and the south. In S. America the Andes 
form a system of greater elevation but less 
breadth than the Rocky Mountains, and con¬ 
sist of a series of ranges [cordilleras) closely 
following the line of the west coast from 
the Isthmus of Panama to Cape Horn. The 
highest summits seem to be Aconcagua 
(22,860 ft.), Sorata or Illampu (21,484), 
and Sahama (21,054). Volcanoes are nu¬ 
merous. Isolated mountain groups of minor 
importance are the highlands of Venezuela 
and of Brazil, the latter near the eastern 
coast, reaching a height of 10,000 feet. 

The fertile lowlands which lie to the east 
of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes 
form a depression extending through both 
continents from the northern to the southern 
oceans. They have somewhat different fea¬ 
tures and different names in different por¬ 
tions ; in N. America are prairies and 
savannahs, in S. America llanos, selvas, and 
pampas. 

Through these low grounds flow the nu¬ 
merous great rivers which form so character¬ 
istic a feature of America. The principal 
are the Mackenzie, Coppermine, and Great 
Fish rivers, entering the Northern Ocean; 
the Churchill, Nelson, Severn, and Albany, 
entering Hudson’s Bay; the St. Lawrence, 
entering the Atlantic; Mississippi and Rio 
del Norte, entering the Gulf of Mexico 
(all these being in N. America); the Mag- 

131 


dalena, Orinoco, Amazon, Paranahiba, Rio 
de la Plata, Colorado, and Rio Negro, enter¬ 
ing the Atlantic (all in S. America); and the 
Yukon, Fraser, Colombia., San Joaquin, Sac¬ 
ramento, and Colorado, entei’ing the Pacific. 
The rivers which flow into the Pacific, how¬ 
ever, owing to the fact that the great back¬ 
bone of the continent, the Rocky Mountains 
and the Andes, lies so near the west coast, are 
of comparatively little importance, in S. 
America being all quite small. Sometimes 
rivers traversing the same plains, and nearly 
on the same levels, open communications 
with each other, a remarkable instance be¬ 
ing the Cassiquiari in S. America, which, 
branching off from the Rio Negro and join¬ 
ing the Orinoco, forms a kind of natural 
canal, uniting the basins of the Orinoco and 
the Amazon. The Amazon or Maranon in 
S. America, the largest river in the world, 
has a course of about 3500 miles, and a 
basin of 2,300,000 squai'e miles; the Mis- 
sissippi-Missouri, the largest river of North 
America, runs a longer course than the Ama¬ 
zon, but the area of its basin is not nearly 
so great. North America has the most ex¬ 
tensive group of lakes in the world—Lakes 
Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and On¬ 
tario, which through the St. Lawrence send 
their drainage to the Atlantic. Thus by 
means of lakes and rivers the interior of 
both N. and S. America is opened up and 
made accessible. 

In regard to climate N. America naturally 
differs very much from S. America, and 
has more resemblance to the continents of 
Europe and Asia (regarded as a whole). In 
N. America, as in the older continent, the 
eastern parts are colder than the western, 
and hence the towns on the Atlantic coast 
have a winter temperature about 10° lower 
than those in corresponding latitudes of 
Europe. The winter temperature of the 
greater part of N. America is indeed severe, 
though the intense cold is less felt on ac¬ 
count of the dryness of the air. There is 
no regular season of rainfall unless in the 
south. Although two-thirds of S. America 
lies within the tropics the heat is not so 
great as might be expected, owing to the 
prevailing winds, the influences of the 
Andes, and other causes. The highest 
temperature experienced is probably not 
more than 100° in the shade; at Rio de 
Janeiro the mean is about 74°, at Lima 72°. 
Over great part of S. America there is a 
wet and a dry season, varying in different 
regions; on the upper Amazon the rains 


AMERICA. 


last for ten months, being caused by the 
prevailing easterly winds bringing moisture 
from the Atlantic, which is condensed on 
the eastern slopes of the Andes. In each 
of the Americas there is a region in which 
little or no rain falls; in N. America it 
extends over a part of the United States 
and Northern Mexico, in S. America over 
a part of the coast region of Peru and Chile. 

America is rich in valuable minerals. It 
has supplied the world with immense quan¬ 
tities of gold and silver, which it still yields 
in no small amount, especially in the United 
States. It possesses inexhaustible stores of 
coal (U. States), with iron, copper, lead, tin, 
mercury, &c. Petroleum may be called one 
of its specialities, its petroleum wells having 
caused whole towns to spring into existence. 
Diamonds and other precious stones are 
found. 

As regards vegetation America may be 
called a region of forests and verdure, vast 
tracts being covered by the grassy prairies, 
llanos, and pampas where the forests fail. 
In N. America the forests have been 
largely made use of by man; in S. America 
vast areas are covered with forests, which 
as yet are traversed only by the uncivil¬ 
ized Indian. In the north is the region 
of pines and firs; further south come the 
deciduous trees, as the oak, beech, maple, 
elm, chestnut, &c. Then follow the ever¬ 
green forests of the tropical regions. The 
useful timber trees are very numerous; 
among the most characteristic of America 
are mahogany and other ornamental woods, 
and various dyewoods. In the tropical parts 
are numerous palms, cacti in great variety, 
and various species of the agave or Ameri¬ 
can aloe. In the virgin forests of S. Ame¬ 
rica the trees are often bound together into 
an impenetrable mass of vegetation by 
various kinds of climbing and twining 
plants. Among useful plants belonging to 
the American continent are maize, the 
potato, cacao, tobacco, cinchona, vanilla, 
Paraguay tea, &c. The most important 
plants introduced are wheat, rice, and other 
grains, sugar-cane, coffee, and cotton, with 
various fruits and vegetables. The vine is 
native to the continent, and both the Ameri¬ 
can and introduced varieties are now largely 
cultivated. 

The animals of America include, among 
carnivora, the jaguar or American tiger, 
found only in S. America; the puma or 
American lion, found mostly in S. Ame¬ 
rica; the grizzly bear of N. America, fully 


as powerful an animal as either; the black 
bear, the skunk, the racoon, the American 
or prairie wolf, several species of foxes, &c. 
The rodents are represented by the beaver, 
the porcupine, and squirrels of several spe¬ 
cies; the marsupials by the opossum. Among 
ruminants are the bison, or, as it is com¬ 
monly called, the buffalo, the moose or elk, 
the Virginian stag, the musk-ox; and in 
S. America the llama (which takes the 
place of the camel of the Old World), the 
alpaca, and the vicuna. Other animals 
most distinctive of S. America are sloths, 
fitted to live only in its dense and boundless 
forests; ant-eaters and armadillos; monkeys 
with prehensile tails, in this and other re¬ 
spects differing from those of the Old 
World; the condor among the heights of 
the Andes, the nandu, rhea or three-toed 
ostrich, beautiful parrots and humming¬ 
birds. Among American reptiles are the 
boa - constrictor, the rattlesnake, the alli¬ 
gator or cayman, the iguana and other 
large lizards, large frogs and toads. The 
domestic animals of America, horses, cattle, 
and sheep, are of foreign origin. r J he elec¬ 
trical eel exists in the tropical waters. 

The population of America consists partly 
of an aboriginal race or races, partly of im¬ 
migrants or their descendants. The aborigi¬ 
nal inhabitants are the American Indians 
or red men, being generally of a brownish- 
red colour, and now forming a very small 
portion of the total population, especially 
in N. America, where the white popula¬ 
tion has almost exterminated them. These 
people are divided into branches, some of 
which have displayed a considerable apti¬ 
tude for civilization. When the Europeans 
became acquainted with the New World, 
Mexico, Central and part of S. America 
were inhabited by populations which had 
made great advances in many things that 
pertain to civilized life, dwelling in large 
and well-built cities under a settled form 
of government, and practising agriculture 
and the mechanical arts. Ever since the 
discovery of America at the close of the 
fifteenth century Europeans of all nations 
have crowded into it; and the compara¬ 
tively feeble native races have rapidly 
diminished, or lost their distinctive fea¬ 
tures by intermixtures with whites, and 
also with negroes brought from Africa to 
work as slaves. These mixed races are dis¬ 
tinguished by a variety of names, as Mesti¬ 
zos, Mulattoes, Zambos, &c. In North Ame¬ 
rica the white population is mainly of Brit- 

132 

































































AMERICA-AMERICANISM. 


ish origin, though to a considerable extent 
it also consists of Germans, Scandinavians, 
&c., and the descendants of such. In Central 
and South America the prevailing white 
nationality is the Spanish and Portuguese. 
In the extreme north are the Eskimos —a 
scattered and stunted race closely allied 
to some of the peoples of Northern Asia. 
That the aboriginal inhabitants of America 
passed over from Asia is tolerably certain, 
but when and from what part we do not 
know. The total population of the New 
World was estimated in 1890 at 110,000,000, 
of which perhaps 72,000,000 were whites, 
16,000,000 mixed races, 12,000,000 negroes, 
and 10,000,00u Indians. As regards religion 
the bulk of the population of N. America 
is Protestant; of Central and S. America 
the religion is almost exclusively Roman 
Catholic. Several millions of the Indians 
are heathens.—The independent states of 
America are all republican in form of gov¬ 
ernment. Brazil also, in 1889, by a peace¬ 
ful revolution, adopted this form of gov¬ 
ernment. See A 7 ., S. and Central America. 

The merit of first unlocking the American 
continent to modern Europe belongs to the 
Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus, 
who discovered, in October, 1492, one of the 
Bahamas, and named it San Salvador. Eu¬ 
ropeans, however, had on different former 
occasions discovered the American coasts, 
and the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island were visited by Northmen and 
named Vinland, in the year 1000. Still 
these discoveries had no influence on the 
enterprise of Columbus, and cannot detract 
in the least from his merit; they were for¬ 
gotten, and had never been made known 
to the inhabitants of the rest of Europe. 
Though Columbus was the first of his time 
who set foot on the New World, it has 
taken its name not from him, but from 
Amerigo Vespucci. The mainland was first 
seen in 1497 by Sebastian Cabot, who sailed 
under the patronage of Henry \ II. of Eng¬ 
land. For further particulars of discovery 
see North America and South America. 

The known history of America hardly 
goes beyond the period of its discovery by 
Columbus; but it possesses many monu¬ 
ments of antiquity that might take us 
many centuries backward, could we learn 
anything of their origin or of those by 
whom they were produced. Among such 
antiquities are great earthworks in the 
form of mounds, or of raised inclosures, 
prowning the tops of hills, river peninsulas, 

133 


&c., and no doubt serving for defence. They 
inclose considerable areas, are surrounded 
by an exterior ditch, and by ramparts which 
are composed of mingled earth and stones, 
and are often of great extent in proportion to 
the area inclosed. They are always supplied 
either naturally or artificially with water, 
and give other indications of having been 
pro\ ided for a siege. Barrows and tumuli 
containing human bones, and which bear 
indications of having been used both as 
places of sepulture and as temples, are also 
numerous. They are in geometrical forms 
— circles, squares, parallelograms, &c. A 
mound on the plain of Cahokia in Illinois, 
opposite the city of St. Louis, is 700 feet 
long, 500 feet broad, and 90 feet high. 
Another class of earth mounds represent 
gigantic animal forms in bas-relief on the 
ground. One is a man with two heads, the 
body 50 feet long and 25 feet broad across 
the breast; another represents a serpent 
• 1000 feet in length, with graceful curves. 
The monuments of Mexico, Central Ame¬ 
rica, and Peru are of a more advanced state 
of civilization, approach nearer to the his¬ 
torical period, and make the loss of authen¬ 
tic information more severely felt. Here 
there are numerous ruined towns with most 
elaborate sculptures, lofty pyramidal struc¬ 
tures serving as temples or forts, statues, 
picture writing, hieroglyphics, roads, aque¬ 
ducts, bridges, &c. Some remarkable pre¬ 
historic remains discovered in recent years 
are what are known as the abodes of the 
‘cliff-dwellers.’ These consist of habita¬ 
tions constructed on terraces and in caves 
high up the steep sides of canons in Colo¬ 
rado and other parts of the western States 
of N. America. Some of these buildings 
are several stories high. See also Mexico, 
Peru , &c. 

American Antiquities. See America. 

American Indians. See Indians. 

Americanism, a term, phrase, or idiom 
peculiar to the English language as spoken 
in America, and not forming part of the 
language as spoken in England. The fol¬ 
lowing is a list of a few of the more note¬ 
worthy Americanisms, some of them being 
rather slangy or vulgar. 

Approbate, to approve. 

Around or round, about or near. To hang around 
is to loiter about a place. 

Backwoods, the partially cleared forest regions in 
the western states. 

Bee, an assemblage of persons to unite their la¬ 
bours for the benefit of an individal or family, 
or to carry out a joint scheme. 


AMERICANISMS. 


Bogus , false, counterfeit. 

Boss, an employer or superintendent of labourers, 
a leader. 

Bug, a coleopterous insect, or what in England 
is called a beetle. 

Buggy, a four-wheeled vehicle. 

Bulldose, to; to intimidate voters. 

Bunkum or buncombe, a speech made solely to 
please a constituency; talk for talking’s sake, 
and in an inflated style. 

Bureau, a chest of drawers; a dressing-table sur¬ 
mounted by a mirror. 

Calculate, to suppose, to believe, to think. 

Camp-meeting, a meeting held in the fields or 
woods for religious purposes, and where the 
assemblage encamp and remain several days. 

Cane-brake, a thicket of canes. 

Car, a carriage or wagon of a railway train. The 
Englishman ‘travels by rail’ or ‘takes the 
train;’ the American takes or goes by the cars. 

Carpet-bagger, a needy political adventurer who 
carries all his earthly goods in a carpet-bag. 

Caucus, a private meeting of the leading politi¬ 
cians of a party to agree upon the plans to be 
pursued in an approaching election. 

Chalk: a long chalk means a great distance, a 
good deal. 

Chunk, a short thick piece of wood or any other 
material. 

Clever, good-natured, obliging. 

Cocktail, a stimulating drink made of brandy or 
gin mixed with sugar, and a very little water. 

Corn, maize; in England, wheat, or grain in 
general. 

Corn-husking, or corn-shucking, an occasion on 
which a farmer invites his neighbours to assist 
him in stripping the husks from his Indian 
corn. 

Cow-hide, a whip made of twisted strips of raw 
hide. 

Creek, a small river or brook; not, as in England, 
a small arm of the sea. 

Cunning, small and pretty, nice, as it was such a 
cunning baby. 

Dander: to get one’s dander raised, to have one’s 
dander up, is to have been worked intoapassion. 

Dead heads, people who have free admission to 
entertainments, or who have the use of public 
conveyances, or the like, free of charge. 

Depdt, a railway-station. 

Down east, in or into the New England States. 
A down-easter is a New Englander. 

Drummer, a bagman or commercial traveller. 

Dry goods, a general term for such articles as are 
sold by linen-drapers, haberdashers, hosiers,&c. 

Dutch, the German language. — Dutchman, a 
German. 

Fix, to; to put in order, to prepare, to adjust. 
To fix the hair, the table, the fire, is to dress 
the hair, lay the table, make up the fire. 

Fixings, arrangements, dress, embellishments, 
luggage, furniture, garnishings of any kind. 

Gerrymander, to arrange political divisions so 
that in an election one party may obtain an 
advantage over its opponent, even though 
the latter may possess a majority of votes in 
the state; from the deviser of such a scheme, 
named Gerry, governor of Massachusetts. 

Given name, a Christian name. 

Grit, courage, spirit, mettle. 

Guess, to; to believe, to suppose, to think, to 
fancy; also used emphatically, as ‘ Joe, will you 
liquor up?’ * I guess I will.’ 

Gulch, a deep abrupt ravine, caused by the action 
of water. 


Happen in, to; to happen to come in or call. 

Help, a servant. 

High falutin, inflated speech, bombast. 

Hoe-cake, a cake of Indian meal baked on a hoe 
or before the fire. 

Indian summer, the short season of pleasant 
weather usually occurring about the middle 
of November. 

Johnny Cake, a cake made of Indian corn meal 
mixed with milk or water and sometimes a little 
stewed pumpkin; the term is also applied to a 
New Englander. 

Julep, a drink composed of brandy or whisky 
with sugar, pounded ice, and some sprigs of 
mint. 

Loafer, a lounger, a vagabond. 

Log-rolling, the assembly of several parties of 
wood-cutters to help one of them in rolling 
their logs to the river after they are felled and 
trimmed; also employed in politics to signify 
a like system of mutual co-operation. 

Lot, a piece or division of land, an allotment. 

Lumber, timber sawed and split for use; as beams, 
joists, planks, staves, hoops, &c. 

Lynch law, an irregular species of justice exe¬ 
cuted by the populace or a mob, without legal 
authority or trial. 

Mail letters, to; to post letters. 

Make tracks, to; to run away. 

Mitten: to get the mitten is to meet with a re¬ 
fusal. 

Mizzle, to ; to abscond, or run away. 

Mush, a kind of hasty-pudding. 

Muss, a state of confusion. 

Notions, a term applied to every variety of small- 
wares. 

One-horse: a one-horse thing is a thing of no value 
or importance, a mean and trilling thing. 

Picaninny, a negro child. 

Pile, a quantity of money. 

Planks, in a political sense, are the several prin¬ 
ciples which appertain to a party ; platform is 
the collection of such principles. 

Reckon, to; to suppose, to think. 

Rile, to; to irritate, to drive into a passion. 

Rock, a stone of any size ; a pebble; as to throw 
rocks at a dog. 

Rooster, the common domestic cock. 

Scalawag, a scamp, a scapegrace. 

Shanty, a mean structure such as squatters erect; 
a temporary hut. 

Skedaddle, to; to run away; a word introduced 
during the civil war. 

Smart, often used in the sense of considerable, a 
good deal, as a smart chance. 

Soft sawder, flattering, coaxing talk. 

Span of horses, tw o horses as nearly as possible 
alike, harnessed side by side. 

Spread-eagle style, a compound of exaggeration, 
bombast, mixed metaphor, &c. 

Spry, active. 

Stampede, the sudden flight of a crowd or number. 

Store, a shop, as a book-store, a grocery store. 

Strike oil, to; to come upon petroleum: hence to 
make a lucky hit, especially financially. 

Stump speech, a bombastic speech calculated to 
please the popular ear, such speeches in newly- 
settled districts being often delivered from 
stumps of trees. 

Sun-up, sunset, sunrise. 

Tall, great, fine (used by Shakspere pretty much 
in the same sense); tall talk is extravagant talk. 

Ticket: to vote the straight ticket is to vote for all 
the men or measures your party wishes. 

Truck, the small produce of gardens; truck 

134 


m 


AMERICUS 


AMIRANTE ISLANDS. 


patch, a plot in which the smaller fruits and 
vegetables are raised. 

Ugly, ill-tempered, vicious. 

Vamose, to; to run off (from the Spanish vamos, 
let us go). 

Wilt, to; to fade, to decay, to droop, to wither. 

Americus, capital of Sumter county, 
Ga.; has a female college, a large carriage 
factory, &c. Pop. 1890, 6398. 

Amerigo Vespucci (a-mer-e'go vesput'- 
che), a maritime discoverer, after whom 
America has been named; born, 1451, at 
Florence, died, 1512, at Seville. In 1499 
he coasted along the continent of America 
for several hundred leagues, and the pub¬ 
lication of his narrative, while the prior 
discovery of Columbus was yet compara¬ 
tively a secret, led to the giving of his name 
to the new continent. 

Amersfoort (a'merz-fort), a town in Hol¬ 
land, province of Utrecht, communicating 
by the Eem with the Zuider-zee; manu¬ 
factures woollen goods, tobacco, glass, and 
silk yarn. Pop. 14,863. 

Ames, Fisher, American statesman, 
born, 1758, died, 1808; studied law, and 
became prominent in his profession—dis¬ 
tinguished as a political orator and essayist. 

Ames, Joseph, English antiquary, born at 
Yarmouth 1689, died 1759. He became a 
ship-chandler at Wapping, devoted himself 
to antiquarian pursuits, and was for many 
years secretary to the Society of Antiquaries. 

Amesbury, Mass, 38 miles north of Bos¬ 
ton ; large woollen mills and carriage 
factory. Pop. 1890, 9797. 

Ametab'ola (Gr. avietabolos, unchange¬ 
able), a division of insects, including only 
the apterous or wingless insects, as lice, 
spring-tails, &c., which do not undergo any 
metamorphosis, but which escape from the 
egg nearly under the same form which they 
preserve through life. 

Am'ethyst, a violet-blue or purple va¬ 
riety of quartz, generally occurring crystal¬ 
lized in hexahedral prisms or pyramids, 
also in rolled fragments, composed of im¬ 
perfect prismatic crystals. It is wrought 
into various articles of jewelry. The oriental 
amethyst is a rare violet-coloured gem, a 
variety of alumina or corundum, of much 
brilliance and beauty. The name is of 
Greek origin, and expresses some supposed 
quality in the stone of preventing or curing 
intoxication. 

Amhara (am-ha'ra), a district of Abys¬ 
sinia, lying between the Tacazz^ and the 
Blue Nile, but of which the limits are not 
well defined. 

Amherst, a village in Massachusetts, 
135 


the seat of Amherst College (Congrega- 
tionalist). Pop. 1890, 4512. 

Amherst (am erst), a seaport of British 
Burmah, 31 miles south of Moulmein, a 
health resort of Europeans. Pop. 3000. The 
district of Amherst has an area of 15,189 
sq. miles; pop. 301,086. It exports rice 
and teak. 

Amherst, Jeffery, Lord, born 1717, 
died 1797; distinguished British general, 
who fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy, 
and commanded in America, where he took 
Louisburg, Ticonderoga, and Quebec, and 
restored the British prestige in Canada. He 
was raised to the peerage, became comman¬ 
der-in-chief, and ultimately field-marshal. 

Amherst, William Pitt, first earl, 
nephew of the above; Governor-general of 
India, 1823; prosecuted the first Burmese 
war, and suppressed the Barrackpore mu¬ 
tiny. Born 1773, died 1857. 

Amian'thus, a kind of flexible asbestos. 
See Asbestos. 

Amice (am'is), an oblong piece of linen 
with an embroidered apparel sewed upon 
it, worn under the alb by priests of the 
R. Cath. Ch. when engaged in the service 
of the mass. 

Amide, Amine (am'id, am'in), names 
given to a series of salts produced by the 
substitution of elements or radicals for the 
hydrogen atoms of ammonia: often used as 
terminations of the names of such salts. 
When these hydrogen atoms are replaced 
by acid radicals, the salts are called amides, 
while if the replacing radicals are basic, the 
salts are termed amines. 

Am'idin, Am'idine, a peculiar substance 
procured from wheat and potato starch. It 
forms the soluble or gelatinous part of starch. 

Amiens (a-me-an), a town of France, 
capital of the department of Somme, on the 
railway from Boulogne to Paris. It has a 
citadel, wide and regular streets, and sev¬ 
eral large open areas; a cathedral, one of 
the largest and finest Gothic buildings in 
Europe, founded in 1220. Having water 
communication with the sea by the Somme, 
which is navigable for small vessels, it has 
a large trade and numerous important 
manufactures, especially cottons and wool¬ 
lens. It was taken by the Germans in 
1870. Pop. 80,288.—The Peace of Amiens, 
concluded between Great Britain, France, 
Spain, and the Batavian Republic, March 
27, 1802, put an end for a time to the great 
war which had lasted since 1793. 

Amirante Islands (a-me-ran'ta), a group 



AMLWCH-AMMONITES. 


of eleven small islands in the Indian Ocean, 
lying south-west of the Seychelles, and 
forming a dependency of Mauritius. 

Amlwch (amTok), a seaport in North 
Wales, island of Anglesey. Pop. 3000. 

Ammana'ti, Bartolomeo, a sculptor and 
architect, born at Florence in 1511, died 
1589; executed the Leda at Florence, a 
gigantic Neptune for St. Mark’s Place at 
Venice, a colossal Hercules at Padua, and 
built the celebrated Trinity Bridge at Flo¬ 
rence. 

Ammergau (am'er-gou), a district in 
Upper Bavaria, having its centre in the 
villages of Ober and Unter Ammergau. 
The former village is famous on account of 
the Passion Play which is performed there, 
at intervals usually of ten years. 

Ammia'nus Marcelli'nus, a Roman his¬ 
torian, born at Antioch in Syria about 320, 
died about 390. He wrote in thirty-one 
books (of which the first thirteen are lost) 
a history of the Caesars, from Nerva to 
Valens, which was highly thought of by Gib¬ 
bon for its fidelity. 

Am'mon, an an¬ 
cient Egyptian 
deity, one of the 
chief gods of the 
country, identi¬ 
fied by the Greeks 
with their su¬ 
preme god Zeus, 
while the Romans 
regarded him as 
the representative 
of Jupiter; repre¬ 
sented as a ram, 
as a human being 
with a ram’s head, 
or simply with the 
horns of a ram. 

There was a celebrated temple of Ammon 
in the Oasis of Siwah in the Libyan desert. 

Ammon, Oasis of. See Siwah. 

Ammo nia, an alkaline substance, which 
differs from the other alkalies by being 
gaseous, and is hence sometimes called the 
volatile alkali. It is a colourless pungent gas, 
composed of nitrogen and hydrogen. It 
was first procured in that state by Priest¬ 
ley, who termed it alkaline air. He ob¬ 
tained it from sal-ammoniac by the action 
of lime, by which method it is yet gener¬ 
ally prepared. It is used for many purposes, 
both in medicine and scientific chemistry; 
not, however, in the gaseous state, but fre¬ 
quently in solution in water, under the 


names of liquid ammonia, aqueous ammo¬ 
nia, or spirits of hartshorn. It may be pro¬ 
cured naturally from putrescent animal 
substances; artificially it is chiefly got from 
the distillation of coal and of refuse animal 
substances, such as bones, clippings and 
shavings of horn, hoof, &c. It may also be 
obtained from vegetable matter when nitro¬ 
gen is one of its elements. Sal-ammoniac is 
the chloride of ammonium. 

Ammoni'acum, a gum-resinous exuda¬ 
tion from an umbelliferous plant, the Dor- 
ema ammonidcum. It has a fetid smell, is 
inflammable, soluble in water and spirit of 
wine; used as an antispasmodic, stimulant, 
and expectorant in chronic catarrh, bron¬ 
chitic affections, and asthma; also used for 
plasters. 

Ammo'niaphone, an instrument, consist¬ 
ing of a metallic tube containing some sub¬ 
stance saturated with ammonia, peroxide 
of hydrogen, and a few flavouring com¬ 
pounds, fitted with a mouthpiece to breathe 
through, which is said to render the voice 
strong, clear, rich, and ringing by the in¬ 
halation of the ammoniacal vapour. It was 
invented by Dr. Carter Moffat, and was 
suggested by the presence of ammonia in 
some quantity in the atmosphere of Italy— 
the country of fine singers. 

Am monite, a fossil Cephalopod, belong¬ 
ing to the genus Ammonites, allied to the 
Nautilus, having a many-chambered shell, 
in shape like the curved horns on the ancient 


Ammonites obtusus. Ammonites varians. 

statues of Jupiter Ammon; characteristic 
of the Trias, Lias, and Oolite formations, 
and sometimes found in immense numbers 
and of great size. 

Ammonites, a Semitic race frequently 
mentioned in Scripture, descended from 
Ben-Ammi, the son of Lot (Gen. xix. 38), 
often spoken of in conjunction with the 
Moabites. A predatory and Bedouin race, 
they inhabited the desert country east of 
Gad, their chief city being Rabbath-Am¬ 
mon (Philadelphia). Wars between the 
Israelites and the Ammonites were fre- 

136 















AMMONIUM 


AMORITES. 


quent; they were overcome by Jephthah, 
Saul, David, Uzziah, Jotham, &c. They 
appear to have existed as a distinct people 
in the time of Justin Martyr, but have sub¬ 
sequently become merged in the aggregate 
of nameless Arab tribes. 

Ammo'nium, the name given to the hypo¬ 
thetical base of ammonia, analogous to a 
metal, as potassium. It has not been iso¬ 
lated, but it is believed to exist in an amal¬ 
gam with mercury. 

Ammo'nius Sac'cas, a Greek philosopher 
who lived about a.d. 175-250. Originally a 
porter in Alexandria, he derived his epithet 
from the carrying of sacks of corn. The son 
of Christian parents, he abandoned their 
faith for the polytheistic philosophy of 
Greece. His teaching was histoi'ically a 
transition stage between Platonism and 
Neo-Platonism. Among his disciples were 
Plotinus, Longinus, Origen, &c. 

Ammunition, military stores generally; 
in modern usage confined to the articles 
used in the discharge of firearms and ord¬ 
nance of all kinds, as powder, balls, shells, 
various kinds of shot, &c. 

Am'nesty, the releasing of a number of 
persons who have been guilty of political 
offences from the consequence of these 
offences. 

Am'nion, the innermost membrane sur¬ 
rounding the fetus of mammals, birds, and 
reptiles.—In botany, a gelatinous fluid in 
which the embryo of a seed is suspended, 
and by which it is supposed to be nourished. 

Amo'aful, village near Coomassie, West 
Africa, at which the Ashantees were de¬ 
feated by British troops under Wolseley, 
31st January, 1874. 

Amoe'ba, a microscopic genus of rhizopo- 
dous Protozoa, of which A. dijfluens, com¬ 
mon in fresh-water 
ponds and ditches, 
is the type. It exists 
as a mass of proto¬ 
plasm, and pushes 
its body out into 
finger-like processes 
or pseudopodia, and 
by means of these 
moves about or 
grasps particles of 
food. There is no 
distinct mouth, and 
food is engulfed 
within any portion of the soft sarcode body. 
Reproduction takes place by fission, or by a 
single pseudopodium detaching itself from 

137 


the parent body and developing into a 
separate amoeba. 

Amoebe'an Poetry, poetry in which per¬ 
sons are represented as speaking alternately, 
as in some of Virgil’s eclogues. 

Amol', a town of northern Persia, 76 
miles N.E. of Teheran. Extensive ruins tell 
of former greatness, the most prominent 
being the mausoleum of Seyed Quam-u- 
deen, who died in 1378. Pop. in winter 
estimated at about 40,000. 

Amo'mum, a genus of plants of the natural 
order Zingiberaceae (ginger, &c.), natives of 
warm climates, and remarkable for the pun¬ 
gency and aromatic properties of their seeds. 
Some of the species yield cardamoms, others 
grains of paradise. 

Amontilla'do, a dry kind of sherry wine 
of a light colour, highly esteemed. 

Am'oo, or Am'oo Daria. See Oxus. 

Amoo-Daria, a Russian territory of Cen¬ 
tral Asia, on the east of the Amoo and south- 
• east of the Sea of Aral; area, 40,000 sq. 
miles. Pop. 220,000. 

Amoor', or Amur', one of the largest rivers 
of Eastern Asia, formed by the junction of 
the rivers Shilka and Argun; flows first in 
a south-eastern and then in a north-east¬ 
ern direction till it falls into an arm of the 
Sea of Okhotsk, opposite the island of 
Saghalien, after a course of 1500 miles. It 
forms, for a large portion of its course, part 
of the boundary-line between the Russian 
and the Chinese dominions, and is navigable 
throughout for four months in the year.— 
Amoor Territory. In 1858 Russia ac¬ 
quired from China the territory on the left 
bank of the Upper and Middle Amoor, 
together with that on both banks of the 
Lower Amoor. The western portion of the 
territory was organized as a separate pro¬ 
vince, with the name of the Amoor (area, 
173,559 square miles; population, 58,000). 
The eastern portion was joined to the Mari¬ 
time Province of Eastern Siberia. 

A'mor, the god of love among the Romans, 
equivalent to the Greek Eros. 

Amor'go (ancient Amorgos ), an island in 
the Grecian Archipelago, one of the Eastern 
Cyclades, 22 miles long, 5. miles broad; 
area, 106 square miles; has a town of the 
same name, with a castle, and a large har¬ 
bour. Pop. 2198. 

Am'orites, a powerful Canaanitish tribe 
at the time of the occupation of the country 
by the Israelites; occupied the whole of 
Gilead and Bashan, and formed two power¬ 
ful kingdoms—a northern, under Og, who 



Amoeba, or Fresh-water Pro¬ 
teus, showing some of the 
shapes which it assumes, 
and the vacuoles in its sar- 
codic substance. 



AMORPHOUS ROCKS-AMPHION. 


is called king of Bash an; and a southern, 
under Sihon, called king of the Amorites; 
first attacked and overthrown by Joshua; 
subsequently subdued, and made tributary 
or driven to mingle with the Philistines and 
other remnants of the Canaanitish nations. 

Amorphous Rocks or Minerals, those 
having no regular structure, or without 
crystallization, even in the minutest particles. 

Amorphozo'a, a term applied to some of 
the lower groups of animals, as the sponges 
and their allies, which have no regular sym¬ 
metrical structure. 

Amortiza'tion, in law, the alienation of 
real property to corporations (that is, in 
mortmain), prohibited by several English 
statutes. 

A'mos, one of the minor prophets; flou¬ 
rished under the kings Uzziah of Judah 
and Jeroboam II. of Israel (b.c. 810 to 784 
by the common chronology). Though en¬ 
gaged in the occupations of a peasant he 
must have had a considerable amount of 
culture, and his book of prophecies has high 
literary merits. It contains denunciations 
of Israel and the surrounding nations, with 
promises of the Messiah. 

Amoy', an important Chinese trading 
port, on a small island off the south-east 
coast opposite Formosa; has a safe and 
commodious harbour, and its merchants are 
among the wealthiest and most enterprising 
in China; one of the five ports opened to 
British commerce in 1843, now open to all 
countries. Pop. 95,600. 

Ampel'idse. See Chatterers. 

Ampere (an-par), Andre-Marie, a cele¬ 
brated French mathematician and philoso¬ 
pher, founder of the science of electro¬ 
dynamics, born at Lyons in 1775, died at 
Marseilles in 1836; professor of mathemat¬ 
ical analysis at the Polytechnic School, 
Paris, and of physics at the College of 
France. What is known as Ampere's 
Theory is that magnetism consists in the 
existence of electric currents circulating 
round the particles of magnetic bodies, being 
in different directions round different par¬ 
ticles when the bodies are unmagnetized, 
but all in the same direction when they are 
magnetized. 

Ampere, Jean Jacques Joseph Antoine, 
historian and professor of French literature 
in the College of France; the only son of 
Andre-Marie Ampere; born at Lyons 1800, 
died 1864; chief works: Histoire Littdraire 
de la France avant la 12 e sibcle (1839); In¬ 
troduction k l’Histoire de la Literature 


frangaise au moyen age (1841); Litterature, 
Voyages et Poesies (1833); LaGrece, Rome 
et Dante, Etudes Litteraires d’apres Nature; 
I Histoire romaine a Rome, four vols. 8vo 
(1856-64). 

Amphib'ia, a class of vertebrate animals, 
which in their early life breathe by gills or 
branchiae, and afterwards partly or entirely 
by lungs. The Frog, breathing in its tad¬ 
pole state by gills and afterwards throwing 
off these organs and breathing entirely by 
lungs in its adult state, is an example of 
the latter phase of amphibian existence. 
The Proteus of the underground caves of 
Central Europe exemplifies forms in which 
the gills of early life are retained throughout 
life, and in which lungs are developed in 
addition to the gills. A second character 
of this group consists in the presence of 
two occipital ‘condyles,’ or processes by 
means of which the skull articulates with 
the spine or vertebral column; Reptiles 
possessing one condyle only. The class is 
divided into four orders: the Ophiomorpha 
(or serpentiform), represented by the Blind- 
worms, in which limbs are wanting and the 
body is snake like ; the Urodela or ‘ Tailed’ 
Amphibians, including the Newts, Proteus, 
Siren, &c.; the Anoura, or Tailless Amphibia, 
represented by the Frogs and Toads; and 
the Labyrinthodontia, which includes the 
extinct forms known as Labyrinthodons. 

Amphibology, an equivocal phrase or 
sentence, not from the double sense of any 
of the words, but from its admitting a 
double construction, as ‘ The duke yet lives 
that Henry shall depose.’ 

Amphic'tyonic League (or Council), in 
ancient Greece, a confederation of tribes 
for the protection of religious worship, but 
which also discussed questions of inter¬ 
national law, and matters affecting their 
political union. The most important was that 
of the twelve northern tribes which met al¬ 
ternately at Delphi and Thermopylae. The 
tribes sent two deputies each, who assembled 
with great solemnity; composed the public 
dissensions, and the quarrels of individual 
cities, by force or persuasion; punished civil 
and criminal offences, and particularly trans¬ 
gressions of the law of nations, and viola¬ 
tions of the temple of Delphi. Its calling on 
the states to punish the Phocians for plun¬ 
dering Delphi caused the Sacred Wars, 
595-586, 448-447, 357-346 b.c. 

Amphi'on, in Greek mythology, son of 
Zeus and Antiope, and husband of NiObe; 
had miraculous skill in music, being taught 

138 



AMPHIOXUS-AMPHIUMA. 


by Mercury, or, according to others, by 
Apollo. In poetic legend he is said to have 
availed himself of his skill when building 
the walls of Thebes—the stones moving 
and arranging themselves in proper position 
at the sound of his lyre. 

Amphioxus. See Lancelet. 

Amphip'oda, an order of sessile-eyed 
malacostracan crustaceans, with feet di- 



Amphipoda.—1, Shore-jumper (Orrhestut littoralis). 

2, Portion showing the respiratory organs a a a. 

rected partly forward and partly backward. 
Many species are found in springs and 
rivulets, others in salt water. The sand- 
hopper and shore-jumper are examples. 

Amphip'rostyle, in architecture, said of a 
structure having the form of an ancientGreelc 
or Roman oblong rectangular temple, with 
a prostyle or portico on each of its ends or 


fronts, but with no columns on its sides or 
flanks. 

Amphisbse'na (Gr., from amphis, both 
ways, and baino , to go), a genus of serpen- 
tiform, limbless, lacertilian reptiles; body 
cylindrical, destitute of scales, and divided 
into numerous annular segments; the tail 
obtuse, and scarcely to be distinguished 
from the head, whence the belief that it 
moved equally well with either end fore¬ 
most. There are several species, found in 
tropical America. They feed on ants and 
earthworms, and were formerly, but errone¬ 
ously deemed poisonous. 

Amphis'cii (Gr. amphi, on both sides, 
and skia, shadow), a term sometimes 
applied to the inhabitants of the inter- 
tropical regions, whose shadows at noon in 
one part of the year are cast to the north 
and in tbe other to the south, according as 
the sun is in the southern or northern signs. 

Amphithe'atre, an ancient Roman edifice 
■of an oval form without a roof, having a 
central area (the arena ) encompassed with 
rows of seats, rising higher as they receded 
from the centre, on which people used to 





Amphitheatre at Pompeii. 


sit to view the combats of gladiators and of 
wild beasts, and other sports. The Colos¬ 
seum at Rome is the largest of all the 
ancient amphitheatres, being capable of 
containing from 50,000 to 80,000 persons. 
That at Verona is one of the best examples 
remaining. Its dimensions are 502 feet by 
401, and 98 feet high. The name means 
‘both-ways theatre,’ or ‘theatre all round,’ 
the theatre forming only a semicircular 
edifice. 

Amphitri'te, in Greek my thology, daugh¬ 
ter of Oce&nus and Tethvs, or of Nereus 

139 


and Doris, and wife of Poseidon (or Nep¬ 
tune), represented as drawn in a chariot of 
shells by Tritons, with a trident in her 
hand. 

Amphit'ryon, in Greek legend, King of 
Thebes, son of Alcaeus, and husband of 
Alcmena. Plautus, and after him Moliere, 
have made an amour of Zeus with Alcmena 
the subject of amusing comedies. 

Amphiu'ma, a genus of amphibians which 
frequent the lakes and stagnant waters of 
North America. The adults retain the clefts 
at which the gills of the tadpole projected, 



















AMPHORA-AMSTERDAM. 


Am'phora, a vessel used by the Greeks 
and Romans for holding liquids; commonly 
tall and narrow, with two handles and a 
pointed end which fitted into a stand or 



Filling an Amphora. 


was stuck in the ground to enable them to 
stand upright; used also as a cinerary urn, 
and as a liquid measure,—Gr. = 9 gallons; 
Rom. = 6 gallons. 

Amplex'icaul, in botany, said of a leaf 
that embraces and nearly surrounds the 
stem. 

Am'plitude, in astronomy, the distance of 
any celestial body (when referred by a secon¬ 
dary circle to the horizon) from the east or 
west points. 

Ampulla (Lat.),in antiquity, a vessel bel¬ 
lying out like a jug, that contained unguents 
for the bath; also a vessel for drinking at 
table. The ampulla has also been employed 
for ceremonial purposes, such as holding 
the oil or chrism used in various church rites 
and for anointing monarchs at their corona¬ 
tion. The ampulla of the English sover¬ 
eigns now in use is an eagle, weighing about 
10 oz., of the purest chased gold, which 
passed through various hands to the Black 
Prince. 

Amputa'tion, in surgery, that operation 
by which a member is separated from the 
body according to the rules of the science. 

Amra'oti, a town of British India in 
Benlr; it is celebrated for its cotton, and is 
a place of good trade. Pop. 23,550. The 
district has an area of 2767 sq. miles; pop. 
546,448. 

AmTitsir, or Amritsar (‘the pool of im¬ 
mortality’), a flourishing commercial town 
of Hindustan, capital of a district of the same 
name, in the Punjab, the principal place of 
the religious worship of the Sikhs. It has 
considerable manufactures of shawls and 


silks; and receives its name from the sacred 
pond constructed by Ram Das. the apostle 
of the Sikhs, in which the Sikhs and other 
Hindus immerse themselves that they may 
be purified from all sin. Pop 151,896.— 
The district of Armitsir has an area of 
1574 miles. Pop. 893,266. 

Am'ru, originally an opponent, and subse¬ 
quently a zealous supporter of Mohammed, 
and one of the ablest of the Mohammedan 
warriors. He brought Egypt under the 
power of the Caliph Omar in 638, and 
governed it wisely till his death in 636. 
The burning of the famous Alexandrian 
Library has been generally attributed to 
him, though only on the authority of a 
writer who lived six centuries later. 

Amsterdam (that is, ‘the dam of the 
Amstel’), one of the chief commercial cities 
of Europe, capital of Holland (but not the 
residence of the kingl, situated at the con¬ 
fluence of the Amstel with the Y or Ij 
(pronounced as eye), an arm of the Zuider¬ 
zee. On account of the lowness of the site 



of the city the greater part of it is built 
on piles. It is divided by numerous canals 
into about 90 islands, which are connected 
by nearly 300 bridges. Many of the streets 
have a canal in the middle with broad brick- 
paved quays on either side, planted with 
rows of trees; the houses are generally of 
brick, many of them six or seven stories high, 
with pointed gables turned to the streets. 
Among the public buildings are the old 
stadthouse, now a royal palace, the interior 
of which is decorated by the Dutch painteva 

140 


















AMSTERDAM-AMYL. 


and sculptors of the seventeenth century 
with their masterpieces; the justiciary hall, 
an imitation of a Greek temple; the town- 
hall (fourteenth century): the exchange; and 
the Palace of National Industry. Among 
its numerous industries may be mentioned 
as a speciality the cutting and polishing of 
diamonds. The harbour, formed by the Y, 
lies along the whole of the north side of thg 
city, and is surrounded by various docks and 
basins. The trade is very great, being much 
facilitated by the great ship-canal (15 in. 


long, 22-26 ft. deep, constructed 1865-76) 
which connects the Y directly with the 
North Sea. Another canal, the North Hol¬ 
land Canal (46 m. long, 20 ft. deep), connects 
Amsterdam with the Helder. Between 
the harbour and the Zuider-zee the Y is 
now crossed by a great dain in which are 
locks to admit vessels and regulate the 
amount of water in the North Sea Canal. 
During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen¬ 
turies Amsterdam was one of the wealthiest 
and most flourishing cities in the world. Its 



Amsterdam—Scene on the Amstel. 


forced alliance with France ruined its trade, 
but since 1813 its commerce has revived. 
Pop. 1890, 417,539. 

Amsterdam, a town of New York state, 
TJ. S., on the M oh awk ri ver, 33 N. w. of Albany; 
a busy manufacturing town. Pop. 17,336. 

Amsterdam, New, or Berbice, a town 
in British Guiana, between the rivers Ber¬ 
bice and Canje, near the sea, the seat of 
the government of Berbice. Pop. 8124. 

Amsterdam Island, a small and almost 
inaccessible island in the Indian Ocean, 
about half-way in a direct line between the 
Cape of Good Hope and Tasmania. 

Am'u. See Amoo, Oxus. 

Amuck', Amur, to run, a phrase applied 
to natives of the Eastern Archipelago who 
are occasionally seen to rush out in a frantic 
state, making indiscriminate and murderous 
assaults on all that come in their way. The 
cause of such outbursts is not well known. 

141 


Am'ulet, a piece of stone, metal, &&, 
marked with certain figures or characters, 
which people in some countries wear about 
them, superstitiously deeming them a pro¬ 
tection against diseases and enchantments. 

Amur' See A moor. 

Am'urath, or Murad, the name of several 
Ottoman sultans. See Ottoman Empire. 

Amyg'daloid (Gr. amygdale, an almond), 
a term applied to an igneous rock, especially 
trap, containing round or almond-shaped 
vesicles or cavities partly or wholly filled 
with crystalline nodules of various minerals, 
particularly calcareous spar, quartz, agate, 
zeolite, chlorite, &c. 

Amyg'dalus, the genus to which the 
almond belongs. 

Am'yl, in chemistry, a hypothetic radical 
believed to exist in many compounds, espe¬ 
cially the fusel oil series, and having the 
formula C 5 H u .— Amyl Nitrite, or Nitrite 












































































AMYlEnE- 

of Amyl, an amber-coloured fluid, smelling 
and tasting like essence of pears, which has 
been employed as an anaesthetic and also in 
relieving cardiac distress, as in angina pec¬ 
toris. 

Am'ylene (C 6 Hi 0 ), an ethereal liquid with 
an aromatic odour, prepared from fusel-oil. 
It possesses anaesthetic properties, and has 
been tried as a substitute for chloroform, 
but is very dangerous. 

Amyl'ic Alcohol, one of the products of 
the fermentation of grain, &c., commonly 
known by the name of fusel-oil (which see). 

Amyrida'ceae, a natural order of plants, 
consisting of tropical trees or shrubs, the 
leaves, bark, and fruit of which abound 
in fragrant resinous and balsamic juices. 
Myrrh, frankincense, and the gum-elemi of 
commerce are among their products. Among 
the chief genera of the order are Amyris, 
Balsamodendron, Boswellia, and Canarium. 

A'na, the neuter plural termination of 
Latin adjectives in -anus, often forming an 
affix with the names of eminent men to denote 
a collection of their memorable sayings— 
thus Scaligeriana, Johnsoniana, the sayings 
of Scaliger, of Johnson; or to denote a col¬ 
lection of anecdotes, or gossipy matter, as 
in boxiana. Hence, as an independent noun, 
books recording such sayings; the sayings 
themselves. 

Anabap'tists (from the Greek anabaptiz- 
ein, to rebaptize), a name given to a Christian 
sect by their adversaries, because, as they 
objected to infant baptism, they re-baptized 
those who joined their body. The founder 
of the sect appears to have been Nicolas 
Storch, a disciple of Luther’s, who seems to 
have aimed also at the reorganization of 
society based on civil and political equality. 
Gathering round him a number of fiery 
spirits, among whom was Thomas Miinzer, 
he incited the peasantry of Suabia and 
Franconia to insurrection—the doctrine of 
a community of goods being now added to 
their creed. This insurrection was quelled 
in 1525, when Miinzer was put to the tor¬ 
ture and beheaded. After the death of 
Miinzer the sectaries dispersed in all direc¬ 
tions, spreading their doctrines wherever 
they went. In 1534 the town of Miinster 
in Westphalia became their centre of action. 
Under the leadership of Bockhold and Mat¬ 
thias their numbers increased daily, and 
being joined by the restless spirits of the 
adjoining towns, they soon made themselves 
masters of the town and expelled their ad¬ 
versaries. Matthias became their prophet, 


-ANABASIS. 

but he fell in a sally against the Bishop of 
Munster, Count Waldeck, who had laid 
siege to the city. Bockhold then became 
leader, assuming the name of John of Ley¬ 
den, king of the New Jerusalem, and Mun¬ 
ster became a theatre of all the excesses of 
fanaticism, lust, and cruelty. The town was 
eventually taken (June, 1535), and Bock¬ 
hold and a great many of his partisans suf¬ 
fered death. This was the last time that 
the movement assumed anything like polit¬ 
ical importance. In the meantime some of 
the apostles, who were sent out by Bock¬ 
hold to extend the limits of his kingdom, 
had been successful in various places, and 
many independent teachers, who preached 
the same doctrines, continued active in the 
work of founding a new empire of pure 
Christians. It is true that they rejected 
the practice of polygamy, community of 
goods, and intolerance towards those of 
different opinions which had prevailed in 
Miinster; but they enjoined upon their ad¬ 
herents the other doctrines of the early 
Anabaptists, and certain heretical opinions 
in regard to the humanity of Christ, occa¬ 
sioned by the controversies of that day about 
the sacrament. The most celebrated of 
those Anabaptist prophets were Melchior 
Hoffmann, the founder of the Hoffmannists 
or Millenarians; Galenus Abrahamssohn, 
from whom the sect of the Galenists were 
called; and Simon Menno, founder of various 
sects known as Mennonites. Menno s prin¬ 
ciples are contained in his Principles of the 
True Christian Faith, 1556, a work which 
is held as authoritative on points of doctrine 
and worship among the Baptist communities 
of Germany and the Netherlands at the 
present day. The application of the term 
Anabaptist to the general body of Baptists 
throughout the world is unwarranted, be¬ 
cause these sects have nothing in common 
with the bodies which sprung up in various 
countries of Europe during the Reformation, 
except the practice of adult baptism. The 
Baptists themselves repudiate the name 
Anabaptist, as they claim to baptize accor¬ 
ding to the original institution of the rite, 
and never repeat baptism in the case of those 
who in their opinion have been so baptized. 
An'abas. See Climbing-perch. 

Anab'asis (‘a going up’), the Greek title 
of Xenophon’s celebrated account of the ex¬ 
pedition of Cyrus the Younger against his 
brother Artaxerxes, king of Persia. The 
title is also given to Arrian’s work which re¬ 
cords the campaigns of Alexander the Great, 

142 



ANABLEPS-ANESTHETICS. 


An'ableps, a genus of fishes of the perch 
family, found in the rivers of Guiana, con¬ 
sisting of but one species, remarkable for a 
peculiar structure of the eyes, in which there 



Anableps tetraophthalmus. 


is a division of the iris and cornea, by trans¬ 
verse ligaments forming two pupils, and 
making the whole eye appear double. The 
young are brought forth alive. 

Anacanthi'ni (Gr. neg. prefix an, and 
akantha, a spine), an order of osseous fishes, 
including the cod, plaice, &c., with spineless 
fins, cycloid or ctenoid scales, the ventral 
fins either absent or below the pectorals, and 
ductless swim-bladder. 

Anacardia'cese, a natural order of plants, 
consisting of tropical trees and shrubs which 
secrete an acrid resinous juice, which is often 
used as a varnish. Mastic, Japan lacquer, 
and Martaban varnish are some of their 
products. The cashoo or cashew (genus 
Anacardium), the pistacia, sumach, mango, 
&c., are members of the order. 

Anach'aris, a genus of plants, nat. order 
Hydrocharidaceae, the species of which grow 
in ponds and streams of fresh water; water- 
thyme or water-weed. A. Alsinastrum has 
been introduced from North America into 
European (including British) rivers, canals, 
and ponds, and by its rapid growth in dense 
tangled masses tends to choke them so as 
materially to impede navigation. 

Anach'ronism, an error of chronology by 
which things are represented as coexisting 
which did not coexist; applied also to any¬ 
thing foreign to or out of keeping with a 
specified time. Thus it is an anachronism 
when Shakspere, in Troilus and Cressida, 
makes Hector quote Aristotle. 

Anacolu'thon, a want of grammatical and 
logical sequence in the structure of a sen¬ 
tence. 

Anacon'da, the popular name of two of 
the largest species of the serpent tribe, viz. 
a Ceylonese species of the genus Python (P. 
tigris), said to have been met with 33 feet 
long; and Eunectes murlnus, a native of 
tropical America, allied to the boa-con¬ 
strictor, and the largest of the serpent tribe, 
attaining the length of 40 feet. 

Anaconda, Deer Lodge county, Mon¬ 
tana, the centre of an active mining dis¬ 
trict. Pop. 1890, about 5000. 

143 


Anac'reon, an amatory lyric Greek poet 
of the sixth century B.c., native of Teos, in 
Ionia. Only a few fragments of his works 
have come down to us; the collection of odes 
that usually passes under the name of An¬ 
acreon is mostly the production of a later 
time. 

Anadyom'ene (Greek, ‘she who comes 
forth’), a name given to Aphrodite (Venus) 
when she was represented as rising from the 
sea, as in the celebrated painting by Apelles, 
painted for the temple of Esculapius at 
Cos, and afterwards iu the temple of Julius 
Caesar at Rome. 

Anadyr (a-na'der), the most easterly of 
the larger rivers of Siberia and of all Asia; 
rises in the Stanovoi Mountains, and falls 
into the Gulf of Anadyr; length, 600 miles. 

Anae'mia (Greek, ‘want of blood’), a 
medical term applied to an unhealthy con¬ 
dition of the body, in which there is a dim¬ 
inution of the red corpuscles which the blood 
should contain. The principal symptoms 
are paleness and general want of colour in 
the skin, languor, emaciation, want of appe¬ 
tite, fainting, palpitation, &c. 

Ansesthe'sia, Anaesthe'sis, a state of in¬ 
sensibility to pain, produced by inhaling 
chloroform, or by the application of other 
anaesthetic agents. 

Anaesthetics, medical agents employed 
for the removal of pain, especially in surgical 
operations, by suspending sensibility either 
locally or generally. Various agents have 
been employed for both of these purposes 
from the earliest times, but the scientific 
use of anaesthetics may be said to date 
from 1800, when Sir Humphry Davy made 
experiments on the anaesthetic properties of 
nitrous oxide, and recommended its use in 
surgery. In 1818 Faraday established the 
anaesthetic properties of sulphuric ether, but 
this agent made no advance beyond the 
region of experiment, till 1844, when Dr. 
Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Connecticut, 
applied the inhalation of sulphuric ether in 
the extraction of teeth, but owing to some 
misadventure did not persevere with it. The 
example was followed in 1846 by Dr. Mor¬ 
ton, a Boston dentist, who also extended the 
use of ether to other surgical operations. 
The practice was soon after introduced into 
England by Mr. Liston, and a London 
dentist, Mr. Robinson. A few weeks later 
Sir James Simpson made the first applica¬ 
tion of ether in a case of midwifery. This 
was early in 1847. Towards the end of the 
same year Simpson had his attention called 




ANAGALL1S - 

to the anaesthetic efficacy of chloroform, and 
announced it as a superior agent to ether. 
This agent has since been the most exten¬ 
sively used anaesthetic, though the use of 
ether still largely prevails in the United 
States. In their general effects ether and 
chloroform are very similar; but the latter 
tends to enfeeble the action of the heart 
more readily than the former. For this 
reason great caution has to be used in ad¬ 
ministering chloroform where there is weak 
heart action from disease. Local anaesthesia 
is produced by isolating the part of the body 
to be operated upon, and producing insensi¬ 
bility of the nerves in that locality. Dr. 
Richardson’s method is to apply the spray 
of ether, which, by its rapid evaporation, 
chills and freezes the tissues and produces 
complete anaesthesia. This mode of treat¬ 
ment, besides its use in minor surgical oper¬ 
ations, has recently begun to have important 
remedial applications. A valuable local anaes¬ 
thetic now employed is cocaine. See Coca. 

Anagal'lis, the JPimpernel genus of plants. 
See Pimpernel. 

Anagni (a-niin'ye), a town of Italy, pro¬ 
vince of Rome; the seat of a bishopric 
erected in 487. Pop. 8220. 

An'agram, the transposition of the letters 
of a word or words so as to form a new 
word or phrase, a connection in meaning 
being frequently preserved; thus, evil, vile; 
Horatio Nelson, Honor est a Nilo (honour is 
from the Nile). 

Anahuac (a-na-wak'; Mexican, ‘ near the 
water’), an old Mexican name applied to 
the plateau of the city of Mexico, from the 
lakes situated there, generally elevated from 
6000 to 9000 feet above the sea. 

An'akim, the posterity of Anak, the son 
of Arba, noted in sacred history for their 
fierceness and loftiness of stature. Their 
stronghold was Kirjath-arba or Hebron, 
which was taken and destroyed by Caleb 
and the tribe of Judah. 

Anakolu'thon. See A nacoluthon. 

Analep'tic, a restorative or invigorating 
medicine or diet. 

An'alogue, in comparative anatomy an or¬ 
gan in one species or group having the same 
function as an organ of different structure 
in another species or group, as the wing of 
a bird and that of an insect, both serving 
for flight. Organs in different animals hav¬ 
ing a similar anatomical structure, develop¬ 
ment, and relative position, independent of 
function or form, such as the arm of a man and 
the wing of a bird, are termed homologues. 


- ANALYSIS. 

Anal'ogy is the mode of reasoning from 
resemblance to resemblance. When we 
find on attentive examination resemblances 
in objects apparently diverse, and in which 
at first no such resemblances were discovered, 
a presumption arises that other resemblances 
may be found by further examination in 
these or other objects likewise apparently 
diverse. It is on the belief in a unity in 
nature that all inferences from analogy rest. 
The general inference from analogy is 
always perfectly valid. Wherever there is 
resemblance, similarity or identity of cause 
somewhere may be justly inferred; but to 
infer the particular cause without particular 
proof is always to reason falsely. Analogy 
is of great use and constant application in 
science, in philosophy, and in the common 
business of life. 

Anal'ysis, the resolution of an object 
whether of the senses or the intellect, into its 
component elements. In philosophy it is the 
mode of resolving a compound idea into its 
simple parts, in order to consider them more 
distinctly, and arrive at a more precise 
knowledge of the whole. It is opposed to 
synthesis, by which we combine and class 
our perceptions, and contrive expressions 
for our thoughts, so as to represent their 
several divisions, classes, and relations. 

Analysis, in mathematics, is, in the widest 
sense, the expression and development of 
the functions of quantities by calculation; 
in a narrower sense the resolving of prob¬ 
lems by algebraic equations. The analysis 
of the ancients w’as exhibited only in geo¬ 
metry, and made use only of geometrical 
assistance, whereby it is distinguished from 
the analysis of the moderns, which extends 
to all measurable objects, and expresses in 
equations the mutual dependence of magni¬ 
tudes. Analysis is divided into lower and 
higher, the lower comprising, besides arith¬ 
metic and algebra, the doctrines of func¬ 
tions, of series, combinations, logarithms, and 
curves, the higher comprising the differen¬ 
tial and integral calculus, and the calculus 
of variations. 

In chemistry, analysis is the process of 
decomposing a compound substance with a 
view to determine either (a) what elements 
it contains (qualitative analysis). or (b) how 
much of each element is present ( quantita¬ 
tive analysis). Thus by the first process we 
learn that water is a compound of hydrogen 
and oxygen, and by the second that it con¬ 
sists of one part of hydrogen by weight to 
eight parts of oxygen. 

144 



ANAM-AN ARTIiROPODA. 


Anam’, a country of Asia occupying the 
K. side of the South-eastern or Indo- 
Chinese Peninsula, along the China Sea, 
having a length of about 850 miles, with a 
breadth varying from over 400 miles in the 
N. to 100 in the middle. It is composed of 
three parts: Tonquin in the N.; Cochin- 
China in the s.; and the territory of the 
Laos tribes, s.w. of Tonquin (together, area, 
170,000 square miles, pop. 15,000,000, 
9,01)0,000 being in Tonquin). The coast 
is considerably indented, especially at the 
mouths of the rivers, where it affords many 
commodious harbours. Tonquin is moun¬ 
tainous on the north, but in the east is 
nearly level, terminating towards the sea in 
an alluvial plain yielding good crops of rice, 
cotton, fruits, ginger, and spices, and a great 
variety of varnish-trees, palms, &c. The 
principal river is the Song-ka, which has 
numerous tributaries, many of them being 
joined together by canals, both for irrigation 
and commerce. Tonquin is rich in gold, 
silver, copper, and iron. Cochin-China is, 
generally speaking, unproductive, but con¬ 
tains many fertile spots, in which grain, legu¬ 
minous plants, sugar-cane, cinnamon, &c., 
are produced in great abundance. Agricul¬ 
ture is the chief occupation, but many of 
the inhabitants are engaged in the spinning 
and weaving of cotton and silk into coarse 
fabrics, the preparation of varnish, iron¬ 
smelting, and the construction of ships or 
junks. The inhabitants are said to be the 
ugliest of the Mongoloid races of the penin¬ 
sula, being under the middle size and less 
robust than the surrounding peoples. Their 
language is monosyllabic, and is connected 
with the Chinese. The religion of the ma¬ 
jority is Buddhism, but the educated classes 
hold the doctrines of Confucius. The prin¬ 
cipal towns are Hanoi, the capital of Ton¬ 
quin, and Hue, the capital of Cochin-China 
and formerly of the whole empire. Anam 
was conquered by the Chinese in 214 B.C., 
but in 1428 a.d. it completely won its inde¬ 
pendence. The French began to interfere 
actively in its affairs in 1847 on the plea 
of protecting the native Christians. By 
.the treaties of 1862 and 1867 they obtained 
the southern and most productive part of Co¬ 
chin-China, subsequently known as French 
Cochin-China; and in 1874 they obtained 
large powers over Tonquin, notwithstand¬ 
ing the protests of the Chinese. Finally, 
in 1883 Tonquin was ceded to France, and 
next year Anam was declared a French pro¬ 
tectorate. After a short period of hostili- 
VOL. I. 145 


ties with China the latter recognized the 
French claims, and Tonquin is now directly 
administered by France, while Anam is en¬ 
tirely under French direction. 

Anamor'phosis, a term denoting a draw¬ 
ing executed in such a manner as to present 
a distorted image of the object represented, 
but which, when viewed from a certain 
point, or reflected by a curved mirror or 
through a polyhedron, shows the object in 
its true proportions. 

An anas. See Pine-apple. 

Anapa', an important seaport and fortified 
town in Russian Circassia, on the Black 
Sea, a station of the Russian navy. Pop. 
about 9000. 

An apaest, in prosody, a foot consisting of 
two short and one long syllable, or two un¬ 
accented and one accented syllable, ex.— 

The As-syr-ian came down, <fcc. 

An'aplasty, a surgical operation to repair 
superficial lesions, or solutions of continuity, 
by the employment of adjacent healthy 
structure. Artificial noses, &c., are thus 
made. 

Anarajapoo'ra, or Anuradhapura, a 
ruined city, the ancient capital of Ceylon, 
built about 540 B.C., and said to have 
covered an area of 300 square miles, doubt¬ 
less a great exaggeration. The spacious 
main streets seemed to have been lined by 
elegant structures. There are still several 
dagobas in tolerable preservation, but the 
great object of interest is the sacred Bo-tree 
planted over 2000 years, and probably the 
oldest historical tree in the world, but 
shattered by a storm in 1887. 

An'archists, a revolutionary sect or body 
setting forth as the social ideal the extreme 
form of individual freedom, and holding that 
all government is injurious and immoral, 
that the destruction of every social form now 
existing must be the first step to the crea¬ 
tion of a new world. Their recognition as 
an independent sect may be dated from the 
secession of Bakunin and his followers from 
the Social Democrats at the congress of the 
Hague in 1872, since which they have 
maintained an active propaganda. Their 
principal journals have been La Revolte 
(Paris), the Freiheit (New York), Liberty , 
(Boston), and the Anarchist (London). The 
congress at London in 1881 decided that all 
means were justifiable as against the organ¬ 
ized forces of modern society. 

Anarthrop'oda, one of the two great 
divisions (the Arthropoda being the other) 

10 



ANAS 


ANATOMY. 


of the Annulosa, or ringed animals, in which 
there are no articulated appendages. It 
includes the leeches, earthworms, tube- 
worms, &c. 

A'nas, a genus of web-footed birds, con¬ 
taining the true ducks. 

Anasarca. See Dropsy. 

Anasta'sius I., Emperor of the East, 
succeeded Zeno, a.d. 491, at the age of sixty. 
He was a member of the imperial life-guard, 
and owed his elevation to Ariadne, widow 
of Zeno, whom he married. He distin¬ 
guished himself by suppressing the combats 
between men and wild beasts in the arena, 
abolishing the sale of offices, building the 
fortifications of Constantinople, &c. His 
support of the heretical Eutychians led to 
a dangerous rebellion and his anathematiz¬ 
ation by the pope. He died a.d. 518. 

Anastat'ica, a genus of cruciferous plants, 
including the Rose of Jericho {A. hierochun- 
tica). See Rose of Jericho. 

Anastatic Printing, a mode of obtaining 
facsimile impressions of any printed page or 
engraving by transferring it to a plate of 
zinc, which, on being subjected to the action 
of an acid, is etched or eaten away with the 
exception of the parts covered with the ink, 
which parts, being thus protected from the 
action of the acid, are left in relief so that 
they can readily be printed from. 

Anastomo'sis, in animals and plants, the 
inosculation of vessels, or the opening of one 
vessel into another, as an artery into another 
artery, or a vein into a vein. By means of 
anastomosis, if the course of a fluid is arrested 
in one vessel it can proceed along others. It 
is by anastomosis that circulation is re-estab¬ 
lished in amputated limbs, and in aneurism 
when the vessel is tied. 

Anath'ema, originally a gift hung up in 
a temple (Greek anatithemi , to lay up), and 
dedicated to some god, a votive offering; but 
it gradually came to be used for expulsion, 
curse. The Roman Catholic Church pro¬ 
nounces the sentence of anathema against 
heretics, schismatics, and all who wilfully 
pursue a course of conduct condemned by 
the church. The subject of the anathema 
is declared an outcast from the church, all 
the faithful are forbidden to associate with 
him, and utter destruction is denounced 
against him, both body and soul. 

Anat'idse, a family of swimming birds, 
including the Ducks, Swans, Geese, &c. 

AnatoTia (from Gr. anatole, the sunrise, 
the Orient), the modern name of Asia 
Minor. See Asia Minor. 


Anat'omy, in the literal sense, means sim¬ 
ply a cutting up, but is now generally applied 
both to the art of dissecting or artificially 
separating the different parts of an organized 
body (vegetable or animal) with a view to dis¬ 
cover their situation, structure, and economy; 
and to the science which treats of the inter¬ 
nal structure of organized bodies. The branch 
which treats of the structure of plants is called 
vegetable anatomy or phytotomy , and that 
which treats of the structure of animals 
animal anatomy or zootomy , a special 
branch of the latter being human anatomy 
or anthropotomy. Comparative anatomy is 
the science which compares the anatomy of 
different classes or species of animals, as that 
of man with quadrupeds, or that of quadru¬ 
peds with fishes; while special anatomy treats 
of the construction, form, and structure of 
parts in asingle animal. The special anatomy 
of an animal may be studied from various 
standpoints: with relation to the succession 
of forms which it exhibits from its first stage 
to its adult form ( developmental or embryo- 
tical anatomy), with reference to the general 
properties and structure of the tissues or tex¬ 
tures ( general anatomy , histology), with refer¬ 
ence to the changes in structure of organs or 
parts produced by disease and congenital mal¬ 
formations [morbid or pathological anatomy ); 
or with reference to the function, use, or pur¬ 
pose performed by the organs or parts ( teleo¬ 
logical or physiological anatomy). Accor¬ 
ding to the parts of the body described the 
different divisions of human anatomy receive 
different names; as, osteology, the description 
of the bones; myology, of the muscles; des- 
mology , of the ligaments and sinews; splanch¬ 
nology, of the viscera or internal organs, in 
which are reckoned the lungs, stomach, and 
intestines,the liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder, 
pancreas,&c. A ngiology describes the vessels 
through which the liquids in the body are con¬ 
ducted, including the blood-vessels, which are 
divided into arteries and veins, and the lym¬ 
phatic vessels, some of which absorb matters 
from the bowels, while others are distributed 
through the whole body, collecting juices 
from the tissues and carrying them back 
into the blood. Neurology describes the 
system of the nerves and of the brain; der¬ 
matology treats of the skin.—Among ana¬ 
tomical labours are particularly to be men¬ 
tioned the making and preserving of anatom¬ 
ical preparations. Preparations of this sort 
can be preserved (1) by drying them and 
clearing away all muscular adhesions, &c., 
as is done with skeletons, the bone* of which 

146 



ANATOMY-ANAXIMANDER. 


are sometimes washed with acids to give firm¬ 
ness and whiteness; (2) by putting them into 
liquids, as alcohol, spirits of turpentine, &c., 
as is done with the intestines and other soft 
parts of the body; (3) by injection, which is 
used with vessels, the course and distribu¬ 
tion of which are to be made sensible and 
the shape of which is to be retained; (4) 
by tanning and covering with a suitable 
varnish, as the muscles. 

Among the ancient writers or authorities 
on human anatomy may be mentioned 
Hippocrates the younger (460-377 B.c.), 
Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), Herophilus and 
Erasistratus of Alexandria (fl. about 300 
b.c.), Celsus (53 B.C.-37 a.d.), and Galen 
of Pergamus (140-200), the most cele¬ 
brated of all the ancient authorities on the 
science. From his time till the revival of 
learning in Europe in the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury anatomy was checked in its progress. 
In 1315 Mondino, professor at Bologna, first 
publicly performed dissection, and published 
a System of Anatomy, which was a text-book 
in the schools of Italy for about 200 years. 
In the sixteenth century Fallopio of Padua, 
Eustachi of Venice, Vesalius of Brussels, 
A 7 aroli of Bologna, and many others, en¬ 
riched anatomy with new discoveries. In 
the seventeenth century Harvey discovered 
the circulation of the blood, Asellius discov¬ 
ered the manner in which the nutritious part 
of the food is conveyed into the circulation, 
while the lymphatic system was detected 
and described by the Dane T. Bartoline. 
Among the renowned anatomists of later 
times we can only mention Malpighi, Boer- 
haave, William and John Hunter, the 
younger Meckel, Bichat, Rosenm filler, 
Quain, Sir A. Cooper, Sir C. Bell, Carus, 
Joh. Mfiller, Hiickel, Gegenbaur, Owen, 
and Huxley. 

Until 1832 the law of Great Britain made 
very insufficient provision for enabling ana¬ 
tomists to obtain the necessary supply of 
subjects for dissection. An act of some years 
previously had, it is true, empowered a crim¬ 
inal court, when it saw fit, to give up to pro¬ 
perly qualified persons the body of a murderer 
after execution for dissection. This, how¬ 
ever, was far from supplying the deficiency, 
and many persons, tempted by the high 
prices offered for bodies by anatomists, re¬ 
sorted to the nefarious practice of digging 
up newly-buried corpses, and frequently, as 
in the case of the notorious Burke and Hare 
of Edinburgh, to murder. To remedy these 
evils a statute was passed in 1832, which 

147 


made provision for the wants of surgeons, 
students, or other duly qualified persons, by 
permitting, under certain regulations, the 
dissection of the bodies of persons who die 
friendless in alms-houses, hospitals, &e. 
For most of our large cities a provision 
similar to that holding in Britain has been 
adopted by the Legislatures of the several 
States. Relatives may effectually object 
to the anatomical examination of a body, 
even though the deceased had expressed a 
desire for it. 

Anaxag oras, an ancient Greek philoso¬ 
pher of the Ionic school, born at Clazomense, 
in Ionia, probably about 500 B.c. When 
only about twenty years of age he settled 
at Athens, and soon gained a high reputa¬ 
tion, and gathered round him a circle of 
renowned pupils, including Pericles, Euri¬ 
pides, Socrates, &c. At the age of fifty he 
was publicly charged with impiety and con¬ 
demned to death, but the sentence was com¬ 
muted to perpetual banishment. He there¬ 
upon went to Lampsacus, where he died 
about 428. Anaxagoras belonged to the 
atomic school of Ionic philosophers. He 
held that there was an infinite number of 
different kinds of elementary atoms, and 
that these, in themselves motionless and 
originally existing in a state of chaos, were 
put in motion by an eternal, immaterial, 
spiritual, elementary being, Nous (Intelli¬ 
gence), from which motion the world was 
produced. The stars were, according to 
him, of earthy materials; the sun a glowing 
mass, about as large as the Peloponnesus; 
the earth was flat; the moon a dark, in¬ 
habitable body, receiving its light from the 
sun; the comets wandering stars. 

Anaximander, an ancient Greek (Ionic) 
philosopher, was born at Miletus in 611 B.c., 
and died 547. The fundamental principle of 
his philosophy is that the source of all things 
is an undefined substance infinite in quan¬ 
tity. The firmament is composed of heat 
and cold, the stars of air and fire. The sun 
occupies the highest place in the heavens, 
has a circumference twenty-eight times 
larger than the earth, and resembles a 
cylinder, from which streams of fire issue. 
The moon is likewise a cylinder, nineteen 
times larger than the earth. The earth has 
the shape of a cylinder, and is placed in the 
midst of the universe, where it remains sus¬ 
pended. Anaximander occupied himself a 
great deal with mathematics and geography. 
To him is credited the invention of geogra¬ 
phical maps and the first application of the 



ANAXIMINES-ANCHORITES. 


gnomon or style fixed on a horizontal plane 
to determine the solstices and equinoxes. 

Anaximines (an-aks-im'e-nez) of Miletus, 
an ancient Greek (Ionic) philosopher, ac¬ 
cording to whom air was the first principle 
of all things. Finite things were formed 
from the infinite air by compression and 
rarefaction produced by eternally existent 
motion; and heat and cold resulted from 
varying degrees of density of the primal 
element. He flourished about 550 b.c. 

Anbuity (an'be-ri), called also Club-root 
and Fingers and Toes, a disease in turnips, in 
which knobs or excrescences are formed on 
the root, which is then useless for feeding 
purposes. By some authorities it is said that 
the disease is caused by various species of 
insects depositing their eggs in the body of 
the root, while others believe that the in¬ 
sects are attracted by the effluvia of the 
diseased plant. 

Ancachs (an-kach'), a dep. of Peru, be¬ 
tween the Andes and the Pacific; area, 
18,000 sq. miles; pop. 284,000. 

Anchises (an-kl'sez), the father of the 
Trojan hero ^Eneas, who carried him off on 
his shoulders at the burning of Troy and 
made him the companion of his voyage to 
Italy. He died during the voyage at Dre- 
panum, in Sicily. 

An chor, an implement for holding a ship 
or other vessel at rest in the water. In 
ancient times large stones or crooked pieces 
of wood heavily weighted with metal were 
used for this purpose. The anchor now used 
is of iron, formed with a strong shank, at 
one extremity of which is the crown, from 
which branch out two arms, terminating in 
broad palms or flukes, the sharp extremity 
of which is the peak or bill; at the other 
end of the shank is the stock (fixed at right 
angles to the plane of the arms), behind 



which is the ring, to which a cable can be 
attached. The principal use of the stock is 
to cause the arms to fall so as one of the 
flukes shall enter the ground. The anchors 
of the largest size carried by men-of-war are 
the best and small boivers, the sheet, and the 
spare, to which are added the stream and 


the kedge, which are used for anchoring in 
a stream or other sheltered place and for 
warping the vessel from one place to another. 
Many improvements and novelties in the 
shape and construction of anchors have been 
introduced within recent times. The prin¬ 
cipal names connected with those alterations 



Martin's Anchor. 


are those of Lieut. Rodgers, who intro¬ 
duced the hollow-shanked anchor with the 
view of increasing the strength without 
adding to the weight; Mr. Porter, who 
made the arms and flukes movable by 
pivoting them to the stock instead of fixing 
them immovably, causing the anchor to 
take a readier aixd firmer hold, and avoiding 
the chance of the cable becoming foul; Mr. 
Trotman, who has farther improved on 
Porter’s invention; and M. Martin, whose 
anchor is of very peculiar form, and is con¬ 
structed so as to be self-canting, the arms 
revolving through an angle of 30° either 
way, and the sharp points of the flukes 
being always ready to enter the ground. 

An'chorites, or An'chorets (Gr. ana- 
choretai, persons who have withdrawn them¬ 
selves from the world), in the early church 
a class of religious persons who generally 
passed their lives in cells, from which they 
never removed. Their habitations were, in 
many instances, entirely separated from the 
abodes of other men, sometimes in the depth 
of wildernesses, in pits or caverns; at other 
times several of these individuals fixed their 
habitations in the vicinity of each other, but 
they always lived personally separate. The 
continual prevalence of bloody wars, civil 
commotions, and persecutions at the be¬ 
ginning of the Christian era must have 
made retirement and religious meditation 
agreeable to men of quiet and contemplative 
minds. This spirit, however, as might have 
been expected, soon led to fanatical excesses; 
many anchorites went without proper cloth¬ 
ing, wore heavy chains, and we find at the 
close of the fourth century Simeon Stylites 
passing thirty years on the top of a column 
without ever descending from it, and finally 
dying there. In Egypt and Syria, where 
Christianity became blended with the Grecian 

148 

















ANCHOVY-ANDALUSIA. 


philosophy and strongly tinged with the 
peculiar notions of the East, the anchorets 
were most numerous; in Europe there were 
comparatively few, and on the develop¬ 
ment and establishment of the monastic 
system they completely disappeared. 

Anchovy (an-cho'vi), a small fish of the 
Herring family, all the species, with excep¬ 
tion of the common anchovy (Engraulis 
encrasichclus) and E. meletta (both Mediter¬ 
ranean species), inhabitants of the tropical 
seas of India and America. The common 
anchovy, so esteemed for its rich and pecu¬ 
liar flavour, is not much larger than the 
middle finger. It is caught in vast num¬ 
bers in the Mediterranean, and frequently 
on the coasts of France, Holland, and the 
south of England, and pickled for exporta¬ 
tion. A favourite sauce is made by pound¬ 
ing the pickled fish in water, simmering for 
a short time, adding a little cayenne pepper, 
and straining the whole through a hair- 
sieve. 

Ancho'vy-pear (Grias cauZifldra), a tree 
of the natural order Myrtaceae, a native of 
Jamaica, growing to the height of 50 feet, 
with large leaves and large white flowers, 
and bearing a fruit somewhat bigger than 
a hen’s egg, which is pickled and eaten like 
the mango, and strongly resembles it in 
taste. 

Anchu'sa. See Alkanet. 

Anchylo'sis. See Ankylosis. 

Ancillon (an-se-yon), Jean Pierre Fre¬ 
deric, an author and statesman of French 
extraction, born at Berlin in 1767 (where his 
father was pastor of the French reformed 
church); died there in 1837. He became pro¬ 
fessor of history in the military academy at 
Berlin, and in 1806 he was charged with 
the education of the crown-prince. He suc¬ 
cessively occupied several important offices 
of state, being at last appointed minister 
of foreign affairs. He wrote on philosophy, 
history, and politics, partly in French, partly 
in German. 

Anckarstrom. See Ankarstrom. 

Anco'na, a seaport of Italy, capital of the 
province of the same name, on the Adriatic, 
130 miles N.e. of Rome, with harbour works 
begun by Trajan, who built the ancient 
mole or quay. A triumphal arch of white 
marble, erected in honour of Trajan, stands 
on the mole. The harbour, once the finest 
on the coast, has been recently improved; 
Ancona is now a station of the Italian fleet, 
and the commerce is increasing. The town 
is indifferently built, but has some remark- 

U9 


able edifices; among others, the cathedral. 
There is a colossal statue of Count Cavour. 
Ancona is said to have been founded about 
four centuries B.C., by Syracusan refugees. 
It fell into the hands of the Romans in the 
first half of the third century B. c., and be¬ 
came a Roman colony. Pop. 31,277. The 
province has an area of 740 square miles, 
and a population of 277,861. 

Ancre (an-kr), Concino Concini, Mar¬ 
shal and Marquis d’, was a native of 
Florence, and on the marriage of Marie de 
Medicis to Henri IV. in 1600 came in her 
suite to France, where he obtained ra| id 
promotion, more especially after the assassi¬ 
nation of the king (1610). He became suc¬ 
cessively Governor of Normandy, Marshal 
of France, and last of all, prime-minister. 
Being thoroughly detested by all classes, at 
last a conspiracy was formed against him, 
and he was shot dead on the Lridge of the 
Louvre in 1617. 

An'cus Mar'cius, according to the tradi¬ 
tionary history of Rome the fourth king of 
that city, who succeeded Tullus Hostilius, 

• 638, and died 614 B.c. He was the son of 
Numa’s daughter, and sought to imitate his 
grandfather by reviving the neglected ob¬ 
servances of religion. He is said to have 
built the wooden bridge across the Tiber 
known as the Sublician, constructed the 
harbour of Ostia, and built the first Roman 
prison. 

Ancy'ra. See Any ora. 

Andalu'sia (Sp. Andalucia), a large and 
fertile district in the south of Spain, bounded 
N. by Estramadura and New Castile, E. by 
Murcia, S. by the Mediterranean Sea, and 
W. by Portugal and the Atlantic; area, 
about 33,650 sq. miles, including the modern 
provinces of Seville, Huelva, Cadiz, Jaen, 
Cordova, Granada, Almeria, and Malaga. 
It is traversed throughout its whole extent 
by ranges of mountains, the loftiest being 
the Sierra Nevada, many summits of which 
are covered with perpetual snow (Mulaha- 
cen is 11,678 feet). Minerals abound, and 
several mines have been opened by English 
companies, especially in the province of 
Huelva, where the Tharsis and Rio Tinto 
copper-mines are situated. The principal 
river is the Guadalquivir. The vine, myrtle, 
olive, palm, banana, carob, &c., grow abun¬ 
dantly in the valley of the Guadalquivir. 
Wheat, maize, barley, and many varieties 
of fruit, grow almost spontaneously; besides 
which, honey, silk, and cochineal form im¬ 
portant articles of culture, The horses and 



ANDAMANS-ANDERSON. 


toules are the best in the Peninsula; the 
bulls are sought for bull-fighting over all 
Spain; sheep are reared in vast numbers. 
Agriculture is in a backward state, and the 
manufactures are by no means extensive. 
The Andalusians are descended in part from 
the Moors, of whom they still preserve 
decided characteristics. Pop. 3,282,448. 

An'damans, a chain of islands on the east 
side of the Bay of Bengal, the principal 
being the North, Middle, South, and Little 
Andamans. Middle Andaman is about 60 
miles long, and 15 or 16 miles broad; North 
and South Andaman are each about 50 
miles long. The inhabitants are about 
14,500 in number, and mostly in a very 
savage state, living almost naked in the 
rudest habitations. They are small (gene¬ 
rally much less than 5 feet), well-formed, 
and active, skilful archers and canoeists, 
and excellent swimmers and divers. These 
islands have been used since 1858 as a 
penal settlement by the Indian government, 
the settlement being at Port Blair, on South 
Andaman. Here rice, coffee, pine-apples, 
nutmegs, &c., are grown, while the jungle 
has been cleared off the neighbouring hills. 
The natives in the vicinity of the settle¬ 
ment have become to some extent civilized. 
The climate is moist, but the settlement is 
now healthy. 

Andante (an-dan'ta; It. ‘at a walking 
pace ’), in music, denotes a movement some¬ 
what slow, graceful, distinct, and soothing. 
The word is also applied substantively to 
that part of a sonata or symphony having 
a movement of this character. 

Andelys, Les (laz and-lez), two towns 
in France called respectively Grand and 
Petit Andely, distant half a mile from each 
other, in the department of Eure, on the 
right bank of the Seine, 19 miles s.E. of 
Rouen. Grand Andely dates from the sixth 
century, its church is one of the finest in 
the department. Petit Andely owes its 
origin to Richard Cceur de Lion, who, in 
1195, built here the Chateau Qaillard, in 
its time one of the strongest fortresses in 
France but now wholly a ruin. Pop. 4099. 

Andenne', a town of Belgium, province 
of Namur, on the right bank of the Meuse 
and 10 miles east of Namur; manufactures 
delft-ware, porcelain, tobacco-pipes, paper, 
&c. Pop. 6278. 

Andernaeh (an'der-nacA),a town of Rhen¬ 
ish Prussia, on the left bank of the Rhine, 
10 miles N.w. of Coblentz, partly surrounded 
walls. . Pop, p669, 


An'dersen, Hans Christian, a Danish 
novelist, poet, and writer of fairy tales, was 
born of poor parents at Odense, 2d April, 
1805. He learned to read and write in a 
charity school, from which he was taken 
when only nine years old, and was put to 
work in a manufactory in order that his 
earnings might assist his widowed mother. 
In his leisure time he eagerly read national 
ballads, poetry, and plays, and wrote several 
tragedies full enough of sound and fury. 
In 1810 he went to Copenhagen, but failed 
in getting any of his plays accepted, and in 
securing an appointment at the theatre, 
having to content himself for some time 
with unsteady employment as a joiner. 
His abilities at last brought him under the 
notice of Councillor Collin, a man of con¬ 
siderable influence, who procured for him 
free entrance into a government school at 
Slagelse. From this school he was trans¬ 
ferred to the university, and soon became 
favourably known by his poetic works. 
Through the influence of Oehlenschlager 
and others he received a royal grant to en¬ 
able him to travel, and in 1833 he visited 
Italy, his impressions of which he published 
in The Improvvisatore (1835) — a work 
which rendered his fame European. The 
scene of his following novel, O. T., was 
laid in Denmark, and in Only a Fiddler he 
described his own early struggles. In 1835 
appeared the first volume of his Fairy Tales, 
of which successive volumes continued to 
be published year by year at Christmas, 
and w'hich have been the most popular and 
wide-spread of his works. Among his other 
works are Picture-books without Pictures, 
A Poet’s Bazaar—the result of a voyage in 
1840 to the East—and a number of dramas. 
In 1845 he received an annuity from the 
government. He visited England in 1848, 
and acquired such a command of the lan¬ 
guage that liis next work, The Two Baron¬ 
esses, was written in English. In 1853 he 
published an autobiography, under the title 
My Life’s Romance, an English translation 
of which, published in 1871, contained addi¬ 
tional chapters by the author, bringing the 
narrative to 1867. Among his later works 
we may mention, To Be or Not To Be 
(1857); Tales from Jutland (1859); The 
Ice Maiden (1863). He died 4th August, 
1875, having had the pleasure of seeing 
many of his works translated into most of 
the European languages. 

Anderson, James, a Scottish writer on po¬ 
litical and rural economy, born in 1739, died 


ANDES. 


ANDERSON 


in 1808. In 1790 he started the Bee, which 
ran to eighteen vols., and contains many 
useful papers on agricultural, economical and 
other topics. Among his other publications, 
Recreations in Agriculture, Natural His¬ 
tory, &c., contains anticipations of theories 
afterwards propounded by Malthus and 
Ricardo. 

Anderson, John, F.R.S., professor of 
natural philosophy in the University of 
Glasgow; born 1726, died 1796. By his 
will he directed that the whole of his 
effects should be devoted to the establish¬ 
ment of an educational institution in Glas¬ 
gow, to be denominated A nderson’s Univer¬ 
sity, for the use of the unacademical classes. 
According to the design of the founder, there 
were to be four colleges—for arts, medicine, 
law, and theology—besides an initiatory 
school. As the funds, however, were totally 
inadequate to the plan, it was at first com¬ 
menced with only a single course of lectures 
on natural philosophy and chemistry. The 
institution gradually enlarged its sphere 
of instruction, coming nearer and nearer to 
the original design of its founder, the medi¬ 
cal school in particular possessing a high 
reputation. Latterly it has been incor¬ 
porated with other institutions to form the 
Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical 
College, the medical school, however, retain¬ 
ing a distinct position. 

Anderson, Robert, M.D., Scottish bio¬ 
graphical writer, born 1750, died 1830. He 

Anderson, Madison county, Indiana, 178 
miles east from Chicago ; a manufacturing 
city, having a hydraulic canal with 44 feet 
fall. Pop. 1890, 10,741. 

Andersson, Carl Jan, an African travel¬ 
ler, born in Sweden in 1827; died in the land 
of the Ovampos, in Western Africa, in July, 
1867. He published Lake Ngami, or Dis¬ 
coveries in South Africa (London, 2 vols., 
1856), and The Okavango River (London, 
1861). 

Andes (an'dez), or, as they are called 
in Spanish South America, Cordilleras 
(ridges) de los Andes, or simply Cordil¬ 
leras, a range of mountains stretching along 
the whole of the west coast of South America, 
from Cape Horn to the Isthmus of Panama 
and the Caribbean Sea. In absolute length 
(4500 miles) no single chain of mountains 
approaches the Andes, and only a certain 
number of the higher peaks of the Hima¬ 
layan chain rise higher above the sea level; 
which peak is the highest of all is not yet 
settled, Several main sections of this huge 


chain are distinguishable. The Southern 
Andes present a lofty main chain, with a 
minor chain running parallel to it on the 
east, reaching from Tierra del Fuego and 
the Straits of Magellan, northward to 
about lat. 28° s., and rising in Aconcagua 
to a height of 22,860 feet. North of this is 
the double chain of the Central Andes, 
inclosing the wide and lofty plateaus of 
Bolivia and Peru, which lie at an elevation 
of more than 12,000 feet above the sea. 
The mountain system is here at its broadest, 
being about 500 miles across. Here are 
also several very lofty peaks, as Illampu or 
Sorata (21,484 feet), Sahama (21,054), Illi¬ 
mani (21,024). Further north the outer 
and inner ranges draw closer together, and 
in Ecuador there is but a single system of 
elevated masses, generally described as 
forming two parallel chains. In this section 
are crowded together a number of lofty 
peaks, most of them volcanoes, either extinct 
or active. Of the latter class are Pichincha 
(15,918 feet), with a crater 2500 feet deep; 
Tunguragua (16,685 feet); Sangay (17,460 
feet); and Cotopaxi (19,550 feet). The lofti¬ 
est summit here appears to be Chimborazo 
(20,581 feet); others are Antisana (19,260 
feet) and Cayambe (19,200 feet). North¬ 
ward of this section the Andes break into 
three distinct ranges, the eastmost running 
north-eastward into Venezuela, the west- 
most running north-westward to the Isth¬ 
mus of Panama. In the central range is 
the volcano of Tolima (17,660 feet). The 
western slope of the Andes is generally 
exceedingly steep, the eastern much less so, 
the mountains sinking gradually to the 
plains. The whole range gives evidence 
of volcanic action, but it consists almost 
entirely of sedimentary rocks. Thus moun¬ 
tains may be found rising to the height of 
over 20,000 feet, and fossiliferous to their 
summits (as Illimani and Sorata or Illam¬ 
pu). There are about thirty volcanoes in 
a state of activity. The loftiest of these 
burning mountains seems to be Gualate'iri, 
in Peru (21,960 feet). The heights of the 
others vary from 13,000 to 20,000 feet. All 
the districts of the Andes system have 
suffered severely from earthquakes, towns 
having been either destroyed or greatly 
injured by these visitations. Peaks crowned 
with perpetut-1 snow are seen all along the 
range, and glaciers are also met with, more 
especially from Aconcagua southwards. The 
passes are generally at a great height, the 
roost important being from 10,000 to 15,000 



ANDIRA — 

feet. Railways have been constructed to 
cross the chain at a similar elevation. 
The Andes are extremely rich in the 
precious metals, gold, silver, copper, plati¬ 
num, mercury, and tin all being wrought: 
lead and iron are also found. The llama 
and its congeners—the guanaco, vicuna, and 
alpaca are characteristic of the Andes. 
Among birds, the condor is the most remark¬ 
able. The vegetation necessarily varies 
much according to elevation, latitude, rain¬ 
fall, &c., but generally is rich and varied. 
Except in the south and north little rain 
falls on the western side of the range, and 
in the centre there is a considerable desert 
area. On the east side the rainfall is heavy 
in the equatorial regions, but in the south 
is very scanty or altogether deficient. From 
the Andes rise two of the largest water sys¬ 
tems of the world —the Amazon and its 
affluents, and the La Plata and its affluents. 
Besides which, in the north, from its slopes 
flow the Magdalena to the Caribbean Sea, 
and some tributaries to the Orinoco. The 
mountain chain pressing so close upon the 
Pacific Ocean, no streams of importance 
flow from its western slopes. The number 
of lakes is not great; the largest and most 
important is that of Titicaca on the 
Bolivian plateau. In the Andes are towns 
at a greater elevation than anywhere 
else in the world, the highest being the 
silver mining town of Cerro de Pasco 
(14,270 feet), the next being Potosi. 

Andi'ra, a genus of leguminous American 
trees, with fleshy plum-like fruits. The 
wood is well fitted for building. The bark 
of A. inermis , or cabbage-tree, is narcotic, 
and is used as an anthelminthic under the 
name of icorm-bark or cabbage bark. The 
powdered bark of A. araroba is used as a 
remedy in certain skin diseases, as herpes. 

Andiron (and'I-ern), a horizontal iron bar 
raised on short legs, with an upright stand¬ 
ard at one end, used to support pieces of wood 
when burning in an open hearth, one andiron 
being placed on each side of the hearth. 

Andkhoo, or Andkhoui (and-Ao', and- 
Ao'i), a town of Afghanistan, about 200 
miles south of Bokhara, on the commercial 
route to Herat. Pop. estimated at 15,000. 

Andocides (an-dos'i-dez), an Athenian 
orator, born in 467 B.C., died about 393 b.c. 
He took an active part in public affairs, and 
was four times exiled ; the first time along 
with Alcibiades, for profaning the Eleusin- 
ian mysteries. Several of his orations are 

extant. . 


• ANDREAS. 

Andorre', or Andor'ra, a small nominally 
independent state in the Pyrenees, south of 
the French department of Aribge, with an 
area of about 230 square miles. It has been 
a separate state for six hundred years; is 
governed by its own civil and criminal codes, 
and has its own courts of justice, the laws 
being administered by two judges, one of 
whom is chosen by France, the other by the 
Bishop of Urgel, in Spain. The little state 
pays annually 920 francs (about £37) to 
France, and 460 francs to the Bishop of 
Urgel. The chief industry is the rearing of 
sheep and cattle. The commerce is largely 
in importing contraband goods into Spain. 
The inhabitants, who speak the Catalan 
dialect of Spanish, are simple in their man¬ 
ners, their wealth consisting mainly of cattle 
and sheep. The village of Old Andorre is 
the capital. Pop. estimated at from 6000 to 
12 , 000 . 

An'dover, a town in England, in Hants, 
12 miles north by west of Winchester, with 
a fine church, and a trade in corn, malt, &c. 
Interesting Roman remains found in the 
vicinity. Pop. 5871. 

An'dover, a town in Massachusetts, 25 
miles N.N.w. of Boston, chiefly remark¬ 
able for its literary institutions—Phillip’s 
Academy, founded in 1778; the Andover 
Theological Seminary, founded in 1807, and 
a female academy founded in 1829. Pop. 
1890, 6142. 

Andrassy (an-dra'she), Count Julius, 
Hungarian statesman, born 1823 ; took part 
in the revolution of 1848, was condemned 
to death, but escaped and went into exile; 
appointed premier when self-government 
was restored to Hungary in 1867; became 
imperial minister for foreign affairs in 1871, 
retiring from public life in 1879. Died 1890. 

Andre (an'dra), Major John, adjutant- 
general in the British army during the 
American revolutionary war. Employed to 
negotiate the defection of the American 
general Arnold, and the delivery of the 
works at West Point, he was apprehended 
in disguise, September 23, 1780, within the 
American lines ; declared a spy from the 
enemy, and hanged Oct. 2, 1780. His 
remains were brought to England in 1821 
and interred in Westminster Abbey, where 
a monument has been erected to his 
memory. 

Andrese (an'dre-a), Johann Valentin, 
German author, born 1586, died 1654. He 
was the author of numerous tracts, several 
of them of an amusing and satirical cha- 

m 



ANDREASBERG - 

racter; and was long believed to be the 
founder of the celebrated Rosicrucian order, 
an opinion that received a certain support 
from some of his works, but in all proba¬ 
bility the real intention of the writer was 
to ridicule a prevalent folly of the age. 

Andreasberg, St., a mining town of the 
Harz Mountains, in Prussia, 57 miles s.s.e. 
of Hanover. Pop. 3262. 

An'drew, St., brother of St. Peter, and 
the first disciple whom Christ chose. He 
is said to have preached in Scythia, in 
Thrace and Asia Minor, and in Achaia 
(Greece), and according to tradition he was 
crucified at Patrae, now Patras, in Achaia, 
on a cross of the form X. Hence such a 
cross is now known as a St. Andrew’s cross. 
The Russians revere him as the apostle who 
brought the gospel to them; the Scots, as 
the patron saint of their country. The day 
dedicated to him is the 30th of November. 
The Russian order of St. Andrew, the high¬ 
est of the empire, was instituted by Peter 
the Great in 1698. For the Scottish Knights 
of St. Andrew or the Thistle, see Thistle. 

An'drews, Lancelot, an eminent and 
learned bishop of the English Church, born 
in London in 1555, died at Winchester 
1626; was high in favour both with Queen 
Elizabeth and James I. In 1605 he became 
Bishop of Chichester, in 1609 was translated 
to Ely, and appointed one of the king’s 
privy-councillors; and in 1618 he was trans¬ 
lated to Winchester. He was one of those 
engaged in preparing the authorized version 
of the Scriptures. He left sermons, lec¬ 
tures, and other writings. 

An'drews, St., an ancient city and par¬ 
liamentary burgh in Fifeshire, Scotland, 
31 miles north-east from Edinburgh; was 
erected into a royal burgh by David I. in 
1140, and after having been an episcopal, 
became an archiepiscopal see in 1472, and 
was for long the ecclesiastical capital of 
Scotland. The cathedral, now in ruins, was 
begun about 1160, and took 157 years to 
finish. The old castle, founded about 1200, 
and rebuilt in the fourteenth century, is 
also an almost shapeless ruin. In it James 
III. was born and Cardinal Beaton assassi¬ 
nated, and in front of it George Wishart 
was burned. There are several other inter¬ 
esting ruins. The trade and manufactures 
are of no importance, but the town is in 
favour as a watering-place. Golfing is 
much played here.—The University of 
St. Andrews, the oldest of the Scotch uni¬ 
versities, founded in 1411, consists of three 


— ANDROMEDA. 

colleges, St. Salvator, St. Leonard’s, and St. 
Mary’s. Originally all three had teachers 
both in arts and theology; but in 1579 the 
colleges of St. Salvator and St. Leonard 
were confined to the teaching of arts and 
medicine, and that of St. Mary to theology. 
In 1747 the two former colleges were united 
by act of Parliament. The university em¬ 
braces three distinct corporations: first, the 
university proper, consisting of the mem¬ 
bers of the two colleges; secondly, the united 
college of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, 
with a principal and ten professors; and 
thirdly, the college of St. Mary, with a 
principal and three professors (or four with 
the principal). Degrees are conferred in 
arts, divinity, medicine, and law, but there 
is a complete teaching staff only in arts 
and divinity. Besides the M.A. degree 
there is that of L.L.A. (Lady Literate in 
Arts). The average number of students is 
about 200. In connection with the univer¬ 
sity is a library containing about 100,000 
printed volumes and 150 MSS. The uni¬ 
versity unites with that of Edinburgh in 
sending a member to Parliament. Madras 
College or Academy, founded by Dr. Bell 
of Madras, the principal secondary school 
of the place, provides accommodation for 
upwards of 1500 scholars. Pop. 6452. 

An'dria, a town of South Italy, province 
of Bari, with a fine cathedral, founded in 
1046; the church of Sant’ Agostino, with a 
beautiful pointed Gothic portal; a college; 
manufactures of majolica, and a good trade. 
Pop. 37,192. 

Andrce'cium, in botany, the male system 
of a flower; the aggregate of the stamens. 

Andromache (an-drom'a-ke), in Greek 
mythology, wife of Hector, one of the most 
attractive female characters of Homer's 
Iliad. The passage describing her parting 
with Hector when he was setting out to his 
last battle, is well known and much admired. 
Euripides and Racine have made her the 
chief character of tragedies. 

Andromeda, in Greek mythology, daugh¬ 
ter of the Ethiopian king Cepheus and of 
Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia having boasted that 
her daughter surpassed the Nereids, if not 
Hera (Juno) herself, in beauty, the offended 
goddesses prevailed on their father, Posei¬ 
don (Neptune), to afflict the country with 
a horrid sea-monster, which threatened uni¬ 
versal destruction. To appease the offended 
god, Andromeda was chained to a rock, but 
was rescued by Perseuj; and after death 
was changed into a constellation, 



ANDROMEDA — 

Androm'eda, a genus of plants belonging 
to the heaths. One species, A. polifolra , 
wild rosemary, a beautiful evergreen shrub, 
grows by the side of ponds and in swamps 
in the Northern States. 

Androni'cus, the name of four emperors 
of Constantinople.— Andronicus I., Com- 
nenus, born 1110, murdered 1185.— An¬ 
dronicus II., Palaeologus, born 1258, died 
1332. His reign is celebrated for the in¬ 
vasion of the Turks.— Andronicus III., 
Palseologus the Younger, born 1296, died 
1341.— Andronicus IV., Palaeologus, reigned 
in the absence of John IV. In 1373 he 
gave way to his brother Manuel, and died 
a monk. 

Androni'cus of Rhodes, a Peripatetic 
philosopher who lived at Rome in the time 
of Cicero. He arranged Aristotle's works 
in much the same form as they retain in 
present editions. 

Androni'cus, Livius, the most ancient of 
the Latin dramatic poets; flourished about 
240 B.c. ; by origin a Greek, and long a 
slave. A few fragments of his works have 
come down to us. 

Androni'cus Cyrrhestes (sir-es'tez), a 
Greek architect about 100 b.c., who con¬ 
structed at Athens the Tower of the Winds, 
an octagonal building, still standing. On 
the top was a Triton, which indicated the 
direction of the wind. Each of the sides 
had a sort of dial, and the building formerly 
contained a clepsydra or water-clock. 

Andropo'gon, a large genus of grasses, 
mostly natives of warm countries. A. schce- 
nanthus is the sweet-scented lemon-grass of 
conservatories. Others also are fragrant. 

An'dros (now Andro), one of the islands 
of the Grecian Archipelago, the most nor¬ 
therly of the Cyclades; about 25 miles long 
and 6 or 7 broad; area, 100 square miles. 
A considerable trade is done in silk, wine, 
olives, figs, oranges, and lemons. Andro or 
Castro, the capital, has a good port. Pop. 
22,562. 

Andros Islands, a group of isles belong¬ 
ing to the Bahamas, lying south-west of 
New Providence, not far from the east 
entrance to the Gulf of Florida. The pas¬ 
sages through them are dangerous. 

Andujar (an-do-Aar'), a town in Spain, 
in Andalusia, 50 miles e.n.e. of Cordova, 
on the Guadalquivir, which is here crossed 
by a fine bridge; manufactures a peculiar 
kind of porous earthen water bottles and 
jugs (alcdrdzas)-. Pop. 12,605. 

An'qcdote, originally some particular rela- 


- ANEMOMETER. 

tive to a subject not noticed in previous 
w'orks on that subject; now any particular 
or detached incident or fact of an interest¬ 
ing nature; a single passage of private life. 

Anega'da, a British West Indian island, 
the most northern of the Virgin group, 
10 miles long by 4A broad; contains nume¬ 
rous salt ponds, from which quantities of 
salt are obtained. 

Anelectric, a body not easily electrified. 

Anelectrode, the positive pole of a gal¬ 
vanic battery. 

Anemom'eter (Gr. anemos, wind, metron, 
measure), an instrument for measuring the 
force and velocity of the wind. This force 
is usually measured by the pressure of the 



Anemometer. 


wind upon a square plate attached to one 
end of a spiral spring (with its axis hori¬ 
zontal), which yields more or less according 
to the force of the wind, and transmits 
its motion to a pencil which leaves a trace 
upon paper moved by clockwork. For indi¬ 
cating the velocity of the wind, the instru¬ 
ment which has yielded the best results 
consists of four hemispherical cups A at¬ 
tached to the ends of equal horizontal arms, 
forming a horizontal cross w r hich turns 
freely about a vertical axis B, which is 
strengthened and supported at C. By 
means of an endless screw D carried by 
the axis a train of wheel-work is set in 
motion; and the indication is given by 
a hand which moves round a dial; or 
in some instruments by several hands 
moving round different dials like those of 
a gas-meter. It is found that the centre 
of each cup moves with a velocity which 
is almost exactly one - third of that of 
the wind. There are various other forms 
of instruments, one of which is portable, 
and is especially intended for measuring the 
velocity of currents of air passing through 
mines, and the ventilating spaces of hospi¬ 
tals and other public buildings. The direc¬ 
tion of the wind as indicated by a vane can 
also be made'to leave a continuous record 
by v&rious contrivances; ope of the most 

ift ' 











ANEMONE-ANGELICA. 


common being a pinion carried by the shaft 
of a vane, and driving a rack which carries 
a pencil. 

Anemone (Gr. anemos, wind), wind¬ 
flower, a genus of plants belonging to the 
Buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), contain¬ 
ing many species. The wood anemone, A. 
nemorosa, is a common and interesting 
little plant, and its white flowers are an 
ornament of many a woodland scene and 
mountain pasture in April and May. A. 
coronaria is a hardy plant, with large va¬ 
riegated flowers. A. Hortensis , star anem¬ 
one, is one of the finest species. 

Anem'one, Sea. See Sea-anemone. 

Anemoph'ilous, said of flowers that are 
fertilized by the wind conveying the pollen. 

Anem'oscope, any contrivance indicating 
the direction of the wind; generally applied 
to a vane which turns a spindle descending 
through the roof to a chamber, where, by 
means of a compass-card and index, the 
direction of the wind is shown. 

Aneroid Barometer. See Barometer. 

Ane'thum, a genus of plants; dill. 

Aneu'rin, a poet and prince of the Cam¬ 
brian Britons who flourished about 600 a.d., 
author of an epic poem, the Gododin, relat¬ 
ing the defeat of the Britons of Strathclyde 
by the Saxons at the battle of Cattraeth. 

An'eurism, Aneurysm (Gr. aneurysma, 
a widening), the dilatation or expansion of 
some part of an artery. Aneurisms arise 
partly from the too violent motion of the 
blood, and partly from degenerative changes 
occurring in the coats of the artery dimin¬ 
ishing their elasticity. They are therefore 
more frequent in the great branches; in par¬ 
ticular, in the vicinity of the heart, in the 
arch of the aorta, and in the extremities, 
where the arteries are exposed to frequent 
injuries by stretching, violent bodily exer¬ 
tions, thrusts, falls, and contusions. An in¬ 
ternal aneurism may burst and cause death. 

Angara', a Siberian river which flows into 
Lake Baikal at its N. extremity, and leaves 
it near the s.w. end, latterly joining the 
Yenisei as the Lower Angara or Upper 
Tunguska. 

Angel (Greek angelos, a messenger), one 
of those spiritual intelligences who are re¬ 
garded as dwelling in heaven and employed 
as the ministers or agents of God. To these 
the name of good angels is sometimes given, 
to distinguish them from bad angels, who 
were originally created to occupy the same 
blissful abode, but lost it by rebellion. 
Scripture frequently speaks of angels, but 

155 


with great reserve, Michael and Gabriel 
alone being mentioned by name in the can¬ 
onical books, while Raphael is mentioned 
in the Apocrypha. The angels are repre¬ 
sented in Scripture as in the most elevated 
state of intelligence, purity, and bliss, ever 
doing the will of God so perfectly that we 
can seek for nothing higher or better than 
to aim at being like them. There are indi¬ 
cations of a diversity of rank and power 
among them, and something like angelic 
orders. They are represented as frequently 
taking part in communications made from 
heaven to earth, as directly and actively 
ministering to the good of believers, and 
shielding or delivering them from evils inci¬ 
dent to their earthly lot. That every per¬ 
son has a good and a bad angel attendant on 
him was an early belief, and is held to some 
extent yet. Roman Catholics show a cer¬ 
tain veneration or worship to angels, and beg 
their prayers and their kind offices; Pro¬ 
testants consider this unlawful. 

Angel, a gold coin introduced into Eng¬ 
land in the reign of Edward IY. and coined 
down to the Commonwealth, so named from 



having the representation of the archangel 
Michael piercing a dragon upon it. It had 
different values in different reigns, varying 
from 6s. 8 d. to 10s. 

Angel-fish, a fish, Sq uatlna angelus, nearly 
allied to the sharks, very ugly and vora¬ 
cious, preying on other fish. It is from 
6 to 8 feet long, and takes its name from its 
pectoral fins, which are very large, extend¬ 
ing horizontally like wings when spread. 
This fish connects the rays with the sharks, 
but it differs from both in having its mouth 
placed at the extremity of the head. It is 
common on the south coasts of Britain, and 
is also called Monkfish and Fiddle-fish. 

Angelical, a name of the genus Arch¬ 
angelica, tribe Angelicidce. A. triqui- 
nata , common in fields in north and west 
of the United States, is a plant well known 
for its aromatic properties; stem dark 
pqrple, furrowed, four to six feet higb$ 




ANGELICO-ANGIOSPERM. 


flowers greenish white. The name is also 
given to the Archangelica officinalis, which 
has greenish flowers, to be found on the 
banks of rivers and ditches in the north 
of Europe, once generally cultivated as an 
esculent, and still valued for its medicinal 
properties. It has a large fleshy aromatic 
root, and a strong-furrowed branched stem 
as hDh as a man. It is cultivated for its 
agreeable aromatic odour and carminative 
]properties. Its blanched stems, candied 
with sugar, form a very agreeable sweet¬ 
meat, possessing tonic and stomachic quali¬ 
ties. 

Angelico (an-jel'i-ko), Fra, the common 
appellation of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, one 
of the most celebrated of the early Italian 
painters. Born 1387, he entered the Domi¬ 
nican order in 1407, and was employed by 
Cosmo de Medici in painting the monastery 
of St. Mark and the church of St. Annun- 
ziata with frescoes. These pictures gained 
him so much celebrity that Nicholas V. in¬ 
vited him to Rome, to ornament his private 
chapel in the Vatican, and offered him the 
archbishopric of Florence, which was de¬ 
clined. He died at Rome 1455. His works 
were considered unrivalled in finish and in 
sweetness and harmony of colour, and were 
made the models for religious painters of 
his own and succeeding generations. His 
easel pictures are not rare in European 
galleries. 

Angeln (ang'eln), a district in Sleswig of 
about 300 sq. m., bounded N. by the Bay 
of Flensburg, s. by the Schlei, E. by the 
Baltic, the only continental territory which 
has retained the name of the Angles. 

Angelo (an'je-lo), Michael. See Buona- 
rotti. 

An'gelus, in the Rom. Cath. Ch. a short 
form of prayer in honour of the incarnation, 
consisting mainly of versicles and responses, 
the angelic salutation three times repeated, 
and a collect, so named from the word with 
which it commences, ‘Angelas Domini’ 
(Angel of the Lord). Hence, also, the bell 
tolled in the morning, at noon, and in the 
evening to indicate the time when the an- 
gelus is to be recited. 

Angermann (ong'er-man), a Swedish 
river which falls into the Gulf of Bothnia 
after a course of 200 miles, and is noted for 
its fine scenery. 

Angermunde (ang'er-mun-de), a town in 
Prussia, on Lake Munde, 42 miles north¬ 
east of ^Berlin. Pop. 6833. 

Angers (an-zha), a town and river-port 


of France, capital of the department of 
Maine-et-Loire, and formerly of the pro¬ 
vince of Anjou, on the banks of the Maine, 
54 miles from the Loire, 150 miles south¬ 
west of Paris. Has an old castle, once a 
place of great strength, now used as a 
prison, barrack, and pow r der - magazine ; a 
fine cathedral of the twelfth and tliirteenth 
centuries, with very fine old painted win¬ 
dows, is the seat of a bishop, and has a 
school of arts and manufactures; a public 
library, an art-gallery, a large modern hos¬ 
pital, the remains of a hospital founded by 
Henry II. of England in 1155; courts of 
law, theatre, &c.; manufactures sail-cloth, 
hosiery, leather, and chemicals, foundries, 
&c. In the neighbourhood are immense 
slate-quarries. Pop. 73,044. 

Angevins (an'je-vins), natives of Anjou, 
often applied to the race of English sover¬ 
eigns called Plautagenets (which see). 
Anjou became connected with England by 
the marriage of Matilda, daughter of Henry 
I., with Geoffrey V., Count of Anjou. The 
Angevin kings of England were Henry II., 
Richard I., John, Henry III., Edward I., 
Edw r ard II., Edward III., and Richard I. 

Angilbert, St., the most celebrated poet 
of his age, secretary and friend of Charle¬ 
magne, whose daughter, Bertha, he married. 
In the latter part of his life he retired to 
a monastery, of which he became abbot. 
Died 814. 

Angina Pectoris (an-ji'na pek'to-ris), or 
Heart-spasm, a disease characterized by an 
extremely acute constriction, felt generally 
in the lower part of the sternum, and 
extending along the whole side of the chest 
and into the corresponding arm, a sense of 
suffocation, faintness, and apprehension of 
approaching death: seldom experienced by 
any but those with organic heart-disease. 
The disease rarely occurs before middle age 
and is more frequent in men than in women. 
Those liable to attack must lead a quiet, 
temperate life, avoiding all scenes which 
would unduly rouse their emotions. The 
first attack is occasionally fatal, but usually 
death occurs as the result of repeated 
seizures. The paroxysm may be relieved by 
opiates, or the inhalation, under due precau¬ 
tion, of anaesthetic vapours. 

Angiosperm (an'ji-o-sperm), a term for 
any plant which has its seeds inclosed in a 
seed-vessel. Exogens are divided into those 
whose seeds are inclosed in a seed-vessel, 
and those with seeds produced and ripened 
without the production of a seed-vessel 

156 



ANGLE-ANGLESEY. 


The former are angiospefms, and constitute 
the principal part of the species; the latter 
are gymnosperms, and chiefly consist of the 
Coniferae and Cycadaceae. 

Angle, the point where two lines meet, 
or the meeting of two lines in a point. A 
plane rectilineal angle is formed by two 
straight lines which meet one another, but 
are not in the same straight line; it may be 
considered the degree of opening or diverg¬ 
ence of the two straight lines which thus 
meet one another. A right angle is an 
angle formed by a straight line falling on 
another perpendicularly, or an angle which 
is measured by an arc of 90 degrees. When 
a straight line, as a b (fig. 1), standing on 
another straight line c D, makes the two 
angles ABC and abd equal to one another, 
each of these angles is called a right angle. 
An acute angle is that which is less than a 

A E 



right angle, as e b c. An obtuse angle is that 
which is greater than a right angle, as 
E B D. Acute and obtuse angles are both 
called oblique, in opposition to right angles. 
Exterior or external angles, the angles of 
any rectilineal figure without it, made by 
producing the sides; thus, if the sides ab, 
b c, C a of the triangle ABC (fig. 2) be pro¬ 
duced to the points fde, the angles cbf, 
A C D, B A E are called exterior or external 
angles. A solid angle is that which is made 
by more than two plane angles meeting in 
one point and not lying in the same plane, as 
the angle of a cube. A spherical angle is an 
angle on the surface of a sphere, contained 
between the arcs of two great circles which 
intersect each other. 

Angler (Lophius piscatorius), also from 
its habits and appearance called Fisliing- 
frog and Sea-devil, a remarkable fish often 
found on the British coasts. It is from 
3 to 5 feet long; the head is very wide, 
depressed, with protuberances, and bearing 
long separate movable tendrils ; the mouth is 
capacious. The American Angler, Fish¬ 
ing-frog or Goose-fish, of the Atlantic, is 
from two to three feet long; it is exceed¬ 
ingly voracious; its large mouth allows 
it to swallow fish about as big as itself. 

157 


Angles, a Low German tribe who in the 
earliest historical period had their seats in 
the district about Angeln, in the duchy of 
Sleswig, and who in the fifth century and 
subsequently crossed over to Britain along 
with bands of Saxons and Jutes (and pro¬ 
bably Frisians also), and colonized a great 
part of what from them has received the 
name of England, as well as a portion of 
the Lowlands of Scotland. The Angles 
formed the largest body among the Ger¬ 
manic settlers in Britain, and founded the 
three kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and 
Northumbria. 

Anglesey (ang'gl-se), or Anglesea (‘the 
Angles’ Island’), an island and county of 
North Wales, in the Irish Sea, separated 
from the mainland by the Menai Strait; 20 
miles long and 17 miles broad ; area, 193,511 
acres. The surface is comparatively flat, 
and the climate is milder than that of the 
adjoining coast. The chief agricultural 
products are oats and barley, wheat, rye, 
potatoes, and turnips. Numbers of cattle 
and sheep are raised. Anglesey yields a 
little copper, lead, silver, ochi’e, &c. The 
inhabitants carry on no manufactures of 
importance. The Menai Strait is crossed 
by a magnificent suspension-bridge, 580 feet 
between the piers and 100 feet above high- 
water mark, and also by the great Britannia 
Tubular Bailway Bridge. The chief market- 
towns are Beaumaris, Holyhead, Llangefni, 
and Amlwch. The county returns one 
member to Parliament. Pop. 50,079. 

Anglesey, Henry William Paget, Mar¬ 
quis of, English soldier and statesman, was 
the eldest son of Henry, first earl of Ux¬ 
bridge, and was born in 1768. He was 
educated at Oxford, and in 1790 entered 
Parliament as member for the Carnarvon 
boroughs. In 1793 he entered the army, 
and in 1794 he took part in the campaign 
in Flanders under the Duke of York. In 
1808 he was sent into Spain with two bri¬ 
gades of cavalry to join Sir John Moore, 
and in the retreat to Coruna commanded 
the rear guard. In 1812 he became, by 
his father’s death, Earl of Uxbridge. On 
Napoleon’s escape from Elba he was ap¬ 
pointed commander of the British cavalry, 
and at the battle of Waterloo, by the charge 
of the heavy brigade overthrew the Imperial 
Guard. For his services he was created 
Marquis of Anglesey. In 1828 he became 
Lord-lieutenant of Ireland and made himself 
extremely popular, but was recalled in con¬ 
sequence of favouring Catholic emancipa- 






ANGLICAN CHURCH 


ANGLTNG. 


tion. He was again lord-lieutenant in 
1830; but lost bis popularity by his opposi¬ 
tion to O’Connell and his instrumentality 
in the passing of the Irish coercion acts; 
and he quitted office in 1833. In 1846-52 
he was ma ter general of the ordnance. 
He died in 1854. 

Anglican Church, a term which strictly 
embraces only the Church of England and the 
Protestant episcopal churches in Ireland, 
Scotland, and the colonies, but is sometimes 
used to include also the episcopal churches 
of the United States. The doctrines of the 
Anglican Church are laid down in the Thir¬ 
ty-nine Articles, and its ritual is contained 
in the Book of Common Rrayer. Within 
the body there is room for considerable 
latitude of belief and doctrine, and three 
sections are sometimes spoken of by the 
names of the High Church, Low Church, 
and Broad Church. See England —Church. 

Angling, the art of catching fish with a 
hook or angle (A. Sax. angel) baited with 
worms, small fish, flies, &c. We find occa¬ 
sional allusions to this pursuit among the 
Greek and Latin classical writers; it is 
mentioned several times in the Old Testa¬ 
ment, and it was practised by the ancient 
Egyptians. The oldest work on the subject 
in English is the Treatyse of Fysshinge 
with an Angle, printed by Wynkyn de 
Worde in 1496, along with treaties on hunt¬ 
ing and hawking, the whole being ascribed 
to Dame Juliana Berners or Barnes, prior¬ 
ess of a nunnery near St. Alban. Walton’s 
inimitable discourse on angling was first 
printed in 1653. The chief appliances 
required by an angler are a rod, line, 
hooks, and baits. Rods are made of various 
materials, and of various sizes. The cane 
rods are lightest; and where fishing- 
tackle is sold they most commonly have 
the preference; but in country places the 
rod is often of the angler’s own manufac¬ 
ture. Rods are commonly made in sepa¬ 
rate joints so as to be easily taken to 
pieces and put up again. They are made 
to taper from the butt end to the top, and 
are usually possessed of a considerable 
amount of elasticity. In length they may 
vary from 10 feet to more than double, 
with a corresponding difference in strength 
—a rod for salmon being necessarily much 
stronger than one suited for ordinary brook 
trout. The reel, an apparatus for winding 
up the line, is attached to the rod near the 
lower end, where the hand grasps it while 
fishing. The best are usually made of brass, 


are of simple construction, and so made as 
to wind or unwind freely and rapidly. That 
part of the line which passes along the rod 
and is wound on the reel is called the reel 
line, and may vary from 20 to 100 yards in 
length, according to the size of the water 
and the habits of the fish angled for; it is 
usually made of twisted horse hair and silk, 
or of oiled silk alone. The casting line, 
which is attached to this, is made of the 
same materials, but lighter and finer. To 
the end of this is tied a piece of fine gut, on 
which the hook, or hooks, are fixed. The 
casting or gut lines should decrease in 
thickness from the reel line to the hooks. 
The hook, of finely tempered steel, should 
readily bend without breaking, and yet 
retain a sharp point. It should be long in 
the shank and deep in the bend; the point 
straight and true to the level of the shank; 
and the barb long. Their sizes and sorts 
must of course entirely depend on the kind 
of fish that are angled for. Floats formed 
of cork, goose and swan quills, &c., are often 
used to buoy up the hook so that it may 
float clear of the bottom. For heavy fish 
or strong streams a cork float is used; in 
slow water and for lighter fish quill floats. 
Baits may consist of a great variety of 
materials, natural or artificial. The princi¬ 
pal natural baits are worms: common garden 
worms, brandlings, and red worms, maggots, 
or gentles (the larvae of blow-flies such as 
are found on putrid meat), insects, small 
fish (as minnows), salmon roe, &c. The 
artificial flies so much used in angling for 
trout and salmon are composed of hairs, 
furs, and wools of every variety, mingled 
with pieces of feathers, and secured together 
by plated wire, or gold and silver thread, 
marking silk, wax, &c. The wings may be 
made of the feathers of domestic fowls, or 
any others of a showy colour. Some ang¬ 
ling authorities recommend that the arti¬ 
ficial flies should be made to resemble as 
closely as possible the insects on which the 
fish is wont to feed, but experience has 
shown that the most capricious and un¬ 
natural combination of feather, fur, &c., 
have been often successful where the most 
artistic imitations have failed. Artificial 
minnows, or other small fish, are also used 
by way of bait, and are so contrived as to 
spin rapidly when drawn through the water 
in order to attract the notice of the fish 
angled for. Angling, especially with the 
fly, demands a great deal of skill and prac¬ 
tice, the throwing of the line properly being 

158 



ANGLO-CATHOLIC - 

the initial difficulty. Nowhere is the art 
pursued with greater success and enthusiasm 
than in Britain and the United States. 

Anglo-Catholic, a term sometimes used 
to designate those churches which hold the 
principles of the English Reformation, the 
Anglican or Established Chui-ch of England 
and the allied churches. The term is also 
applied to that party in the English Church 
which favours doctrines and religious forms 
closely approaching those of the Roman 
Catholic Church, objects to be called Pro¬ 
testant, and corresponds closely with the 
Ritualistic section of the Church. 

Anglo-Saxons, the name commonly given 
to the nation or people formed by the amal¬ 
gamation of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, 
who settled in Britain in the fifth and sixth 
centuries after Christ, the Anglo-Saxons 
being simply the English people of the 
earlier period of English history. The tribes 
who were thus the ancestors of the bulk 
of the English-speaking nationalities came 
from north Germany, where they inhabited 
the parts about the mouths of the Elbe and 
Weser, and the first body of them who 
gained a footing in Britain are said to have 
landed in 449, and to have been led by 
Hengist and Horsa. From the preponder¬ 
ance of the Angles the whole country came 
to be called Engla-land , that is, the land of 
the Angles or English. As an outline of 
Anglo-Saxon history will be found in the 
article England , we shall here give only 
some particulars regarding the institutions 
and customs, language and literature, of the 
Anglo-Saxons. 

The whole Anglo-Saxon community was 
frequently spoken of as consisting of the 
eorls and the ceorls, or the nobles and com¬ 
mon freemen. The former were the men of 
property and position, the latter were the 
small landholders, handicraftsmen, &c., who 
generally placed themselves under the pro¬ 
tection of some nobleman, who was hence 
termed their hldford or lord. Besides these 
there was the class of the serfs or slaves 
(thedivas ), who might be either born slaves 
or freemen who had forfeited their liberty 
by their crimes, or whom poverty or the for¬ 
tune of war had brought into this position. 
They served as agricultural labourers on 
their masters’ estates, and were mere chattels, 
as absolutely the property of their master 
as his cattle. 

The king (cyning, cyng) was at the head 
of the state; he was the highest of the 
nobles and the chief magistrate. He was 

159 


— ANGLO-SAXONS. 

not looked upon as ruling by any divine 
right, but by the will of the people, as re¬ 
presented by the witan (wise men) or great 
council of the nation. The new king was 
not always the direct and nearest heir of 
the late king, but one of the royal family 
whose abilities and character recommended 
him for the office. He had the right of 
maintaining a standing army of household 
troops, the duty of calling together the 
witan, and of laying before them public 
measures, with certain distinctions of dress, 
dwelling, &c., all his privileges being pos¬ 
sessed and exercised by the advice and con¬ 
sent of the xoitena-gemdt or parliament (lit. 
meeting of the wise). Next in rank and 
dignity to the king were the ealdorrnen, who 
were the chief witan or counsellors, and 
without whose assent laws could not be 
made, altered, or abrogated. They were at 
the head of the administration of justice in 
the shires, possessing both judicial and ex¬ 
ecutive authority, and had as their officers 
the scir-gerefan or sheriffs. The ealdorrnen 
led the fyrd or armed force of the county, 
and the ealdorinan, as such, held possession of 
certain lands attached to the office, and was 
entitled to a share of fines and other moneys 
levied for the king’s use and passing through 
his hands. The whole executive government 
may be considered as a great aristocratical 
association, of which the ealdorrnen were 
the members, and the king little more than 
the president. The ealdorman and the king 
were both surrounded by a number of fol¬ 
lowers called thcgnas or thanes, who were 
bound by close ties to their superior. The 
king’s thanes were the higher in rank, they 
possessed a certain quantity of land, smaller 
in amount than that of an ealdorman, and 
they filled offices connected with the per¬ 
sonal service of the king or with the admin¬ 
istration of justice. The scir-gerefa (shire- 
reeve or sheriff) was also an important 
functionary. He presided at the county- 
court along with the ealdorman and bishop, 
or alone in their absence; and he had to 
carry out the decisions of the court, levy 
fines, collect taxes, &c. The shires were 
divided into hundreds and tithings,the latter 
consisting of ten heads of families, who were 
jointly responsible to the state for the good 
conduct of any member of their body. For 
the trial and settlement of minor causes 
there was a hundred court held once a 
month. The place of the modern parliament 
was held by the witena-gemot. Its mem¬ 
bers, who were not elected, comprised the 



ANGLO-SAXONS. 


ffetheliugs or princes of the blood royal, the 
bishops and abbots, the ealdormen, the 
thanes, the sheriffs, &c. 

One of the peculiar features of Anglo- 
Saxon society was the wergyld, which was 
established for the settling of feuds. A sum, 
paid either in kind or in money, was placed 
upon the life of every freeman, according to 
his rank in the state, his birth, or his office. 
A corresponding sum was settled for every 
wound that could be inflicted upon his per¬ 
son; for nearly every injury that could be 
done to his civil rights, his honour, or his 
domestic peace, &c. From the operation of 
this principle no one from king to peasant 
was exempt. 

Agriculture, including especially the rais¬ 
ing of cattle, sheep, and swine, was the 
chief occupation of the Anglo-Saxons. 
Gardens and orchards are frequently men¬ 
tioned, and vineyards were common in 
the southern counties. The forests were 
extensive, and valuable both from the mast 
they produced for the swine, and from the 
beasts of the chase which they harboured. 
Hunting was a favourite recreation among 
the higher ranks, both lay and clerical. 
Fishing was largely carried on, herrings 
and salmon being the principal fish caught; 
and the Anglo-Saxon whaling vessels 
used to go as far as Iceland. The manu¬ 
factures were naturally of small moment. 
Iron was made to some extent, and some 
cloth, and saltworks were numerous. In 
embroidery and working in gold the 
English were famous over Europe. There 
was a considerable trade at London, which 
was frequented by Normans, French, 
Flemings, and the merchants of the Hanse 
towns. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were 
notorious for their excess in eating and 
drinking, and in this respect formed a strong 
contrast to the Norman conquerors. Ale, 
mead, and cider were the common bever¬ 
ages, wine being limited to the higher 
classes. Pork and eels were favourite 
articles of food. The houses were rude 
structures, but were often richly furnished 
and hung with fine tapestry. The dress of 
the people was loose and flowing, composed 
chiefly of linen, and often adorned with em¬ 
broidery. The men wore their hair long 
and flowing over their shoulders. Christi¬ 
anity was introduced among the Anglo- 
Saxons in the end of the sixth century by 
St. Augustine, who was sent by Pope Gre¬ 
gory the Great, and became the first Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury. Kent, then under 


King Ethelred, was the first place where it 
took root, and thence it soon spread over 
the rest of the country. The Anglo-Saxon 
Church long remained independent of Rome, 
notwithstanding the continual efforts of the 
popes to bring it under their power. It was 
not till the tenth century that this result 
was brought about by Dunstan. Many 
Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics were distinguished 
for learning and ability, but the Venerable 
Bede holds the first place. 

The Anglo-Saxon language , which is sim¬ 
ply the earliest form of English, claims kin¬ 
ship with Dutch, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, 
and German, especially with the Low 
German dialects (spokenin North Germany). 
It was not called Anglo-Saxon by those who 
spoke it, but Englisc (English), and many 
condemn the former name as a misnomer. 
The existing remains of Anglo-Saxon liter¬ 
ature show different dialects, of which the 
northern and the southern were the princi¬ 
pal. The former was the first to be cul¬ 
tivated as a literary language, but after¬ 
wards it was supplanted in this respect by 
the southern or that of Wessex. It is in 
the latter that the principal Anglo-Saxon 
works are written. The Anglo-Saxon al¬ 
phabet was substantially the same as that 
which we still use, except that some of the 
letters were different in form, while it had 
two characters either of which represented 
the sounds of th in thy and in thing. Nouns 
and adjectives are declined much as in Ger¬ 
man or in Latin. The pronouns of the first 
and second person had a dual number, ‘ we 
two’ or ‘us two’ and ‘you two,’ besides the 
plural for more than two. The infinitive of 
the verb is in -an, the participle in -ende, and 
there is a gerund somewhat similar in its 
usage to the Latin gerund. The verb had 
four moods—indicative, subjunctive, impera¬ 
tive, and infinitive, but only two tenses, the 
present (often used as a future) and the past. 
Other tenses and the passive voice were 
formed by auxiliary verbs. Anglo-Saxon 
words terminated in a vowel much more 
frequently than the modern English, and 
altogether the language is so different that 
it has to be learned quite like a foreign 
tongue. Yet notwithstanding the large 
number of words of Latin or French origin 
that our language now contains, and the 
changes it has undergone, its framework, so 
to speak, is still Anglo-Saxon. Many chap¬ 
ters of the New Testament do not contain 
more than 4 per cent of non-Teutonic words, 
and as a whole it averages perhaps 6 or 7. 

160 


ANGLO-SAXONS — 

The existing remains of Anglo-Saxon 
literature include compositions in prose and 
poetry, some of which must be referred 
to a very early period, one or two perhaps 
to a time before the Angles and Sax¬ 
ons emigrated to England. The most im¬ 
portant Anglo-Saxon poem is that called 
Beowulf, after its hero, extending to more 
than 6000 lines. Beowulf is a Scandinavian 
priiice, who slays a fiendish cannibal, after 
encountering supernatural perils, and is at 
last slain in a contest with a frightful 

O 

dragon. Its scene appears to be laid en¬ 
tirely in Scandinavia. Its date is uncertain; 
parts of it may have been brought over at 
the emigration from Germany, though in its 
present form it is much later than this. The 
poetical remains include a number of reli¬ 
gious poems, or poems on sacred themes; ec¬ 
clesiastical narratives, as lives of saints and 
versified chronicles; psalms and hymns; 
secular lyrics; allegories, gnomes, riddles, 
&c. The religious class of poems was the 
largest, and of these Caedmon’s (fl. about 
660) are the most remarkable. His poems 
consist of loose versions of considerable por¬ 
tions of the Bible history, and treat of the 
creation, the temptation, the fall, the exodus 
of the Israelites, the story of Daniel, the 
incarnation, and the harrowing of hell, or 
release of the ransomed souls by Christ. 
Other most interesting poems are those as¬ 
cribed to Cynewulf, the Christ, Elene, and 
Juliana, the subjects respectively being 
Christ, the finding of the cross by the 
Empress Helena, and the life of Juliana. 
Rhyme was little used in Anglo-Saxon 
poetry, alliteration being employed instead, 
as in the older northern poetry generally. 
The style of the poetry is highly elliptical, 
and it is full of harsh inversions and obscure 
metaphors. 

The Anglo-Saxon prose remains consist 
of translations of portions of the Bible, 
homilies, philosophical writings, history, 
biography, laws, leases, charters, popular 
treatises on science and medicine, gram¬ 
mars, &c. Many of these were transla¬ 
tions from the Latin. The Anglo-Saxon 
versions of the Gospels, next to the Moeso- 
Gothic, are the earliest scriptural transla¬ 
tions in any modern language. The Psalms 
are said to have been translated by Bishop 
Aldhelm (died 709), and also under Alfred’s 
direction; and the Gospel of St. John by 
Bede; but it is not known who were the 
authors of the extant versions. A transla¬ 
tion of the first seven books of the Bible is 
VOL. L 161 


-ANGORA GOAT. 

believed to have been the work of HSlfric, 
who was Abbot of Ensham and flourished in 
the beginning of the eleventh century. We 
have also eighty homilies from his pen, several 
theological treatises, a Latin grammar, &c. 
King Alfred was a diligent author, besides 
being a translator of Latin works. We have 
under his name translations of Boethius De 
Consolatione Philosophic, the Universal 
History of Orosius, Bede’s Ecclesiastical 
History, the Pastoral Care of Gregory the 
Great, &c. The most valuable to us of the 
Anglo-Saxon prose writings is the Saxon 
Chronicle, as it is called, a collection of 
annals recording important events in the 
history of the country, and compiled in dif¬ 
ferent religious houses. The latest text 
comes down to 1154. A considerable body 
of laws remains, as well as a large number 
of charters. The whole of the literature 
has never yet been printed. 

Angola, a Portuguese territory in Wes¬ 
tern Africa, south of the Congo, the name 
being applied sometimes to the whole Por¬ 
tuguese territory here from about lat. 6° s. 
to lat. 17° s. (area, 300,000 sq. m.; pop. 
2 ,000,000), sometimes to the northern part 
of it, also known as Loanda. This latter is 
flat and sterile on the coast, but becomes 
hilly or mountainous and fertile in the in¬ 
terior, and is watered by several streams, 
of which the Coanza (Kwanza) is the largest. 
The principal town is the seaport of St. Paul 
de Loanda, which was long the great Por¬ 
tuguese slave-mart. Exports ivory, palm-oil, 
coffee, hides, gum, wax, &c. Pop. 600,000. 

Angola Pea (Cajanus indicus). See 
Pigeon Pea. 

Ango'ra (anc. Ancy'ra), a town in the 
interior of Asiatic Turkey, 215 miles E.s.E. 
of Constantinople, with considerable re¬ 
mains of Byzantine architecture, and relics 
of earlier times, both Greek and Roman, 
such as the remnants of the Monumentum 
Ancyranum, raised in honour of the Em¬ 
peror Augustus. All the animals of this 
region are long haired, especially the goats 
(see Goat), sheep, and cats. This hair forms 
an important export as well as the fabric 
called camlet here manufactured from it; 
other exports being goats’ skins, dye-stuffs, 
gums, honey and wax, &c. Estimated pop. 
35,000. 

Angora Cat, the large and long-haired 
white variety of the common cat, said to 
belong originally to Angora. 

Angora Goat, a variety of the common 
goat with long silky hair. See Goat. 



ANGOSTURA-ANHYDRIDE. 


Angostu'ra, or Ciudad Bolivar, a city 
of Venezuela, capital of the province of 
Bolivar, on the Orinoco, about 240 miles 
from the sea, with governor’s residence, a 
college, a handsome cathedral, and a con¬ 
siderable trade, steamers and sailing-vessels 
ascending to the town. Exports: gold, cot¬ 
ton, indigo, tobacco, coffee, cattle, &c.; im¬ 
ports: manufactured goods, wines, flour, &c. 
Pop. 10,861. 

Angostura Bark, the aromatic bitter 
medicinal bark obtained chiefly from Gali- 
pea officinalis , a tree of 10 to 20 feet high, 
growing in the northern regions of South 



America; nat. order Rutace*. The bark is 
valuable as a tonic and febrifuge, and is also 
used for a kind of bitters. From this bark 
being adulterated, indeed sometimes entirely 
replaced, by the poisonous bark of Strychnos 
Nux Vomica, its use as a medicine has been 
almost given up. 

Angouleme (an-go-lam), an ancient town 
of Western France, capital of dep. Charente, 
on the Charente, 60 miles n.n.e. of Bor¬ 
deaux, on the summit of a rocky hill. It 
has a fine old cathedral, a beautiful modern 
town-hall, a lyceum, public library, natural 
history museum, hospital, lunatic asylum, 
&c. There are manufactures of paper, wool¬ 
lens, linens, distilleries, sugar-works, tan¬ 
neries, &c. Pop. 34,647. 

Angra (an'gra), a seaport of Terceira, one 
of the Azores, with the only convenient har¬ 
bour in the whole group. It has a cathedral, 
a military college and arsenal, &c., and is 
the residence of the governor-general of the 
Azores, and of the foreign consuls. Pop. 
11,281. 

Angra Pequena (an' gra pe-ka'na; Port. 


‘little bay’), a bay on the west of Namaqua- 
land, S. Africa, where the German commer¬ 
cial firm LiAderitz in 1883 acquired a strip of 
territory and established a trading station. 
In 1884, notwithstanding some weak pro¬ 
tests of the British, Germany took under her 
protection the whole coast territory from the 
Orange River to 26° s. lat., and soon after 
extended the protectorate to the Portuguese 
frontier, but not including the British settle¬ 
ment of Walfisch Bay. 

Angri (an'gre), a town of Southern Italy, 
12 m. N.w. of Salerno, in the centre of a 
region which produces grapes, cotton, and 
tobacco in great quantities. Pop. 7762. 

Anguilla (an-gwil'la). See Eel. 

Anguilla (ang-gil'a), or Snake Island, 
one of the British West India Islands, 60 m. 
n.e. of St. Kitts; about 20 m. long, with a 
breadth varying from 3 to 1£ m.; area, 35 
sq. m. A little sugar, cotton, tobacco, and 
maize are grown. There is a saline lake in 
the centre, which yields a large quantity of 
salt. Pop. 2773, of whom 100 are white. 

Anguis (ang'gwis). See Blind-norm. 

Angus (ang'gus), a name of Forfarshire. 

An'halt, a duchy of North Germany, 
lying partly in the plains of the Middle 
Elbe, and partly in the valleys and uplands 
of the Lower Harz, and almost entirely 
surrounded by Prussia; area, 906 square 
miles. All sorts of grain, wheat especially, 
are grown in abundance; also flax, rape, 
potatoes, tobacco, hops, and fruit. Excel¬ 
lent cattle are bred. The inhabitants are 
principally occupied in agriculture, though 
there are some iron-works and manufac¬ 
tures of woollens, linens, beet-sugar, tobacco, 
&c. The dukes of Anhalt trace their origin 
to Bernard (1170-1212), son of Albert the 
Bear. In time the family split up into 
numerous branches, and the territory was 
latterly held by three dukes (Anhalt-Ivo- 
then, Anhalt-Bernburg, and Anhalt-Des- 
sau). In 1863 the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau 
became sole heir to the three duchies. The 
united principality is now incorporated in 
the German Empire, and has one vote in the 
Bundesrath and two in the Reichstag. Pop. 
1891, 247,603, almost all Protestants. The 
chief towns are Dessau, Bernburg, Kothen, 
and Zerbst. 

An'holt, an island belonging to Denmark, 
in the Cattegat, midway between Jutland 
and Sweden, 7 m. long, 4^ broad, largely 
covered with drift-sand, and surrounded by 
dangerous banks and reefs. Pop. 170. 

Anhy'dride, one of a class of chemical 
162 






ANHYDRITE-ANIMAL. 


compounds, which may be regarded as re¬ 
presenting an acid minus the water in its 
composition. They were formerly called 
anhydrous acids. 

Anhy'drite, anhydrous sulphate of cal¬ 
cium, a mineral presenting several varieties 
of structure and colour. The vulpinite of 
Italy possesses a granular structure, resem¬ 
bling a coarse-grained marble, and is used 
in sculpture. Its colour is grayish-white, 
intermingled with blue. 

Ani (a'ne), a ruined city in Russian Ar¬ 
menia, formerly the residence of the Ar¬ 
menian dynasty of the Bagratidae, having 
in the eleventh century a pop. of 100,000, 
in the thirteenth century destroyed by the 
Mongols. 

Aniene (a-ne-a'na). See Anio. 

An'iline, a substance which has recently 
become of great importance, as being the 
basis of a number of brilliant and durable 
dyes. It is found in small quantities in coal- 
tar, but the aniline of commerce is obtained 
from benzene or benzole, a constituent of 
coal-tar, consisting of hydrogen and carbon. 
Benzene, when acted on by nitric acid, pro¬ 
duces nitro-benzene; and this substance 
again, when treated with nascent hydro¬ 
gen, generally produced by the action of 
acetic acid upon iron-filings or scraps, pro¬ 
duces aniline. It is a colourless oily liquid, 
somewhat heavier than water, with a pecu¬ 
liar vinous smell, and a burning taste. Its 
name is derived from anil, the Portuguese 
and Spanish name for indigo, from the dry 
distillation of which substance it was first 
obtained by the chemist Unverdorben in 
1826. When acted on by arsenious acid, 
bichromate of potassium, stannic chloride, 
&c., aniline produces a great variety of com¬ 
pounds, many of which are possessed of very 
beautiful colours, and are known by the 
names of aniline purple, aniline green, rosti- 
ine, violine, bleu de Paris, magenta, &c. 
The manufacture of these aniline or coal- 
tar dyes as a branch of industry was intro¬ 
duced in 1856 by Mr. Perkin of London. 
Since then the manufacture has reached 
large dimensions. 

An'ilism, aniline poisoning, a name given 
to the aggregate of symptoms which often 
show themselves in those employed in ani¬ 
line works, resulting from the inhalation of 
aniline vapours. It may be either acute 
or chronic. In a slight attac c of the for¬ 
mer kind, the lips, cheeks, and ears become 
of a bluish colour, and the person’s walk 
may be unsteady; in severe cases there is 


163 


loss of consciousness. Chronic anilism is* 
accompanied by derangement of the diges¬ 
tive organs and of the nervous system, 
headaches, eruptions on the skin, muscular 
weakness, &c. 

Animal, an organized and sentient living 
being. Life in the earlier periods of natural 
history was attributed almost exclusively 
to animals. With the progress of science, 
however, it was extended to plants. In the 
case of the higher animals and plants there 
is no difficulty in assigning the individual to 
one of the two great kingdoms of organic 
nature, but in their lowest manifestations, 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms are 
brought into such immediate contact that 
it becomes almost impossible to assign them 
precise limits, and to say with certainty 
where the one begins and the other ends. 
Prom form no absolute distinction can be 
fixed between animals and plants. Many 
animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea-mats, 
&c., so resemble plants in external appear¬ 
ance that they were, and even yet popu¬ 
larly are, looked upon as such. With re¬ 
gard to internal structure no line of de- 
markation can be laid down, all plants and 
animals being, in this respect, fundamen¬ 
tally similar; that is, alike composed of 
molecular, cellular, and fibrous tissues. Nei¬ 
ther are the chemical characters of animal 
and vegetable substances more distinct. 
Animals contain in their tissues and fluids 
a larger proportion of nitrogen than plants, 
whilst plants are richer in carbonaceous 
compounds than the former. In some ani¬ 
mals,moreover,substances almost exclusively 
confined to plants are found. Thus the 
outer wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose , 
a substance largely found in plant-tissues; 
whilst chlorophyll , the colouring-matter of 
plants, occurs in Hydra and many other lower 
animals. Power of motion, again, though 
broadly distinctive of animals, cannot be 
said to be absolutely characteristic of them. 
Thus many animals, as oysters, sponges, 
corals, &c., in their mature condition are 
rooted or fixed, while the embryos of many 
plants, together with numerous fully de¬ 
veloped forms, are endowed with locomo¬ 
tive power by means of vibratile, hair-like 
processes called cilia. The distinetb e points 
between animals and plants which are most 
to be relied on are those derived from the 
nature arid mode of assimilation of the food. 
Plants feed on inorganic matters , consisting 
of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and 
mineral matters. They can only take in< 



ANIMAL — 

food Which is presented to them in a liquid 
or qaseous state. The exceptions to these 
rules are found chiefly in the case of plants 
which live parasitically on other plants or 
on animals, in which cases the plant may 
be said to feed on organic matters, repre¬ 
sented by the juices of their hosts. Animals, 
on the contrary, require organized matters 
for food. They feed either upon plants or 
upon other animals. But even carnivorous 
animals can be shown to be dependent upon 
plants for subsistence; since the animals 
upon which Carnivora prey are in their 
turn supported by plants. Animals, fur¬ 
ther, can subsist on solid food in addition 
to liquids and gases; but many animals 
(such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere 
imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by 
their tissues, such forms possessing no dis¬ 
tinct digestive system. Animals require a 
due supply of oxygen gas for their susten¬ 
ance, this gas being used in respiration. 
Plants, on the contrary, require carbonic 
acid. The animal exhales or gives out car¬ 
bonic acid as the part result of its tissue- 
waste, whilst the plant taking in this gas is 
enabled to decompose it into its constituent 
carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the 
former for the uses of its economy, and 
liberates the oxygen, which is thus restored 
to the atmosphere for the use of the animal. 
Animals receive their food into the interior 
of their bodies, and assimilation takes place 
in their internal surfaces. Plants, on the 
other hand, receive their food into their 
external surfaces, and assimilation is effec¬ 
ted in the external parts, as are exemplified 
in the leaf-surfaces under the influence of 
sunlight. All animals possess a certain 
amount of heat or temperature which is 
necessary for the performance of vital action. 
The only classes of animals in which a con¬ 
stantly-elevated temperature is kept up are 
birds and mammals. The bodily heat of the 
former varies from 100° F. to 112° F., and 
of the latter from 96° F. to 104° F. The 
mean or average heat of the human body 
is about 99° F., and it never falls much 
below this in health. Below birds animals 
are named ‘cold-blooded,’ this term mean¬ 
ing in its strictly physiological sense that 
their temperature is usually that of the 
medium in which they live, and that it 
varies with that of the surrounding medium. 

‘ Warm-blooded’ animals, on the contrary, 
do not exhibit such variations, but mostly 
retain their normal temperature in any 
atmosphere. The cause of the evolution 


- ANIMALS. 

of heat in the animal body is referred to 
the union (bv a process resembling ordinary 
combustion) of the carbon and hydrogen of 
the system with the oxygen taken in from 
the air in the process of respiration. 

Animal Chemistry, the department of or¬ 
ganic chemistry which investigates the com¬ 
position of the fluids and thesolidsof animals, 
and the chemical action that takes place in 
animal bodies. There are four elements, 
sometimes distinctively named organic ele¬ 
ments, which are invariably found in living 
bodies, viz. carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
nitrogen. To these may be added, as fre¬ 
quent constituents of the human body, sul¬ 
phur, phosphorus, lime, sodium, potassium, 
chlorine, and iron. The four organic ele¬ 
ments are found in all the fluids and solids 
of the body. Sulphur occurs in blood and 
in many of the secretions. Phosphorus is 
also common, being found in nerves, in the 
teeth, and in fluids. Chlorine occurs almost 
universally throughout the body; lime is 
found in bone, in the teeth, and in the secre¬ 
tions; iron occurs in the blood, in urine, and 
in bile; and sodium, like chlorine, is of 
almost universal occurrence. Potassium 
occurs in muscles, in nerves, and in the 
blood-corpuscles. Minute quantities of cop¬ 
per, silicon, manganese, lead, and lithium 
are also found in the human body. The 
compounds formed in the human organism 
are divisible into the organic and inorganic. 
The most frequent of the latter is water, of 
which tw'o-thirds (by weight) of the body 
are composed. The organic compounds 
may, like the foods from which they are 
formed, be divided into the nitrogenous 
and non-nitrogenous. Of the former the 
chief are albumen (found in blood, lymph, 
and chyle), casein (found in milk), myosin 
(in muscle), gelatin (obtained from bone), 
and others. The non-nitrogeneous com¬ 
pounds are represented by organic acids, 
such as formic, acetic, butyric, stearic, &c.; 
by animal starches, sugars; and by fats and 
oils, as stearin and olein. 

Animalcule (an-i-mal'kul), a general 
name given to many forms of animal life 
from their minute size. We thus speak of 
the ‘ Infusorian ’ Animalcules among the 
Protozoa, of the Rotifera or ‘ Wheel Ani¬ 
malcules,’ &c., but the term is not now 
used in zoology in any strict significance, 
nor is it employed in classification. 

Animal Heat. See Animal. 

Animal Magnetism. See Mesmerism. 

Animals, Cruelty to, an offence against 

164 



ANIMAL WORSHIP 


ANKARSTROM. 


which societies have been formed and laws 
passed in England and other countries. 
According to English law, if any person 
shall cruelly beat, ill-treat, overdrive, abuse, 
or torture any domestic animal, he shall for¬ 
feit a sum not exceeding £5 for every such 
offence. Bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and 
the like, are also prohibited. Provision is 
also made for the punishment of persons 
unlawfully and maliciously killing, maiming, 
or wounding cattle, dogs, birds, beasts, and 
other animals. See also Vivisection. 

Animal Worship, a practice found to 
prevail, or to have prevailed, in the most 
widely distant parts of the world, both the 
Old and the New, but nowhere to such an 
amazing extent as in ancient Egypt, not¬ 
withstanding its high civilization. Nearly 
all the more important animals found in the 
country were regarded as sacred in some 
part of Egypt, and the degree of reverence 
paid to them was such that throughout 
Egypt the killing of a hawk or an ibis, 
whether voluntary or not, was punished 
with death. The worship, however, was not, 
except in a few instances, paid to them as 
actual deities. The animals were merely 
regarded as sacred to the deities, and the 
worship paid to them was symbolical. 

An'ima Mun'di (L., ‘the soul of the 
world’), a term applied by some of the older 
philosophers to the ethereal essence or spirit 
supposed to be diffused through the universe, 
organizing and acting throughout the whole 
and in all its different parts; a theory 
closely allied to Pantheism. 

Anime (an'i-me), a resin supposed to be 
obtained from the trunk of an American 
tree (Hyrnencea Courbaril). It is of a trans¬ 
parent amber colour, has a light, agreeable 
smell, and is soluble in alcohol. It strongly 
resembles copal, and, like it, is used in mak¬ 
ing varnishes. 

An'imism, the system of medicine pro¬ 
pounded by Stahl, and based on the idea 
that the soul ( anima ) is the seat of life. In 
modern usage the term is applied to express 
the general doctrine of souls and other 
spiritual beings, and especially to the ten¬ 
dency, common among savage races, to 
explain all the phenomena in nature not 
due to obvious natural causes by attribut¬ 
ing them to spiritual agency. Amongst 
the beliefs most characteristic of animism 
is that of a human apparitional soul, bear¬ 
ing the form and appearance of the body, 
and living after death a sort of semi-human 
life. 


Anio (now Aniene or Teverone), a river 
in Italy, a tributary of the Tiber, which it 
enters from the east a short distance above 
Rome, renowned for the natural beauties of 
the valley through which it flows, and for the 
remains of ancient buildings there situated, 
as the villas of Maecenas and the Emperor 
Hadrian. 

Anise (an'is; Pimpinella Anisum), an an¬ 
nual plant of the natural order Umbelliferae, 
a native of the Levant, and cultivated in 
Spain, France, Italy, Malta, &c., whence 
the fruit, popularly called aniseed, is im¬ 
ported. This fruit is ovate, with ten nar¬ 
row ribs, between which are oil-vessels. It 
has an aromatic smell, and is largely em¬ 
ployed to flavour liqueurs (aniseed or ani¬ 
sette), sweetmeats, &c. Star-anise is the 
fruit of an evergreen Asiatic tree (Ulicium 
anisdtum) of the natural order M agnoliace;e, 
and is brought chiefly from China. Its 
flavour is similar to that of anise, and it is 
used for the same purposes. An essential 
oil is obtained from both kinds of anise, 
and is used in the preparation of cordials, 
for scenting soaps, &c. 

Aniseed. See Anise. 

Anisette, a liqueur flavoured with spirit 
of anise; also called aniseed. 

Anjou (an-zho), an ancient province of 
France, now forming the department of 
Maine-et-Loire, and parts of the depart¬ 
ments of Indre-et-Loire, Mayenne, and- 
Sarthe; area, about 3000 sq. miles. In 1060 
the province passed into the hands of the 
house of Gatinais, of which sprang Count 
Godfrey V., who, in 1127, married Matilda, 
daughter of Henry I. of England, and so 
became the ancestor of the Plantagenet 
kings. Anjou remained in the possession 
of the English kings up to 1204, when 
John lost it to the French king Philip 
Augustus. In 1226 Louis VIII. bestowed 
this province on his brother Charles; but in 
1328 it was reunited to the French crown. 
John I. raised it to the rank of a ducal 
peerage, and gave it to his son Louis. 
Henceforth it remained separate from the 
French crown till 1480, when it fell to 
Louis XI. 

Ankarstrom (an'kar-streum), Jan Jakob, 
the murderer of Gustavus III. of Sweden, 
was born about 1762, and was at first a 
page in the Swedish court, afterwards an 
officer in the royal body-guards. He was 
a strenuous opponent of the sov ereign s 
measures to restrict the privileges of the no¬ 
bility, and joined Counts Horn and Ribbing 


165 



ANKER- 

and others in a plot to assassinate Gustavus. 
The assassination took place on the 15th 
March, 1792. Ankarstrom was tried, tor¬ 
tured, and executed in April, dying boast¬ 
ing of his deed. 

Anker, an obsolete measure used in 
Britain for spirits, beer, &c., containing 84 
imperial gallons. A measure of similar 
capacity was used in Germany and else¬ 
where in Europe. 

An'klam, a town in Prussia, province of 
Pomerania, 47 miles north-west of Stettin, 
on the river Peene, which is here navigable. 
Shipbuilding, woollen and cotton manufac¬ 
tures, soap-boiling, tanning, &c., are carried 
on. Pop. 12,361. 

Ankle. See Foot. 

Anko'bar, or Anko'ber, a town in Abys¬ 
sinia, capital of Shoa, on a steep conical hill 
8200 feet high. Pop. 6000. 

Ankylo'sis, or Anchylo'sis, stiffness of 
the joints caused by a more or less com¬ 
plete coalescence of the bones through ossi¬ 
fication, often the result of inflammation or 
injury. False ankylosis is stiffness of a 
joint when the disease is not in the joint 
itself, but in the tendinous and muscular 
parts by which it is surrounded. 

Ann, or Annat, in Scottish law, the half- 
year’s stipend of a living, after the death of 
the clergyman, payable to his family or 
next of kin. The right to the ann is not 
vested in the clergyman himself, but in his 
representatives; and, accordingly, it can 
neither be disposed of by him nor attached 
for his debts. 

Anna, an Anglo-Indian money of account, 
the sixteenth part of a rupee, and of the 
value of 1 

An'naberg, a town in Saxony, 47 miles 
south-west of Dresden. Mining (for silver, 
cobalt, iron, &c.) is carried on, and there 
are manufactures of lace, ribbons, fringes, 
buttons, &c. Pop. 13,822. 

Anna Comne'na, daughter of Alexius 
Comnenus I., Byzantine emperor. She 
was born 1083, and died 1148. After her 
father’s death she endeavoured to secure 
the succession to her husband, Nicephorus 
Briennius, but was baffled by his want of 
energy and ambition. She wrote (in Greek) 
a life of her father Alexius, which, in the 
midst of much fulsome panegyric, contains 
some valuable and interesting information. 
She forms a character in Sir Walter Scott’s 
Count Robert of Paris. 

Anna Ivanov'na. Empress of Russia; 
born in 1693, the daughter of Ivan, the 


ANNAPOLIS. 

elder half-brother of Peter the Great. She 
was married in 1710 to the Duke of Cour- 
land, in the following year was left a 
widow, and in 1730 ascended the throne of 
the czars on the condition proposed by the 
senate, that she would limit the absolute 
power of the czars, and do nothing with¬ 
out the advice of the council composed of 
the leading members of the Russian aristo¬ 
cracy. But no sooner had she ascended the 
throne than she declared her promise null, 
and proclaimed herself autocrat of all the 
Russias. She chose as her favourite Ernest 
John von Biren or Biron, who was soon all- 
powerful in Russia, and ruled with great 
severity. Several of the leading nobles 
were executed, and many thousand men 
exiled to Siberia. In 1737 Anna forced 
the Courlanders to choose Biren as their 
duke, and nominated him at her death 
regent of the empire during the minority of 
Prince Ivan (of Brunswick). Anna died 
in 1740. See Biren. 

An'nals, a history of events in chronologi¬ 
cal order, each event being recorded under 
the year in which it occurred. The name 
is derived from the first annual records of 
the Romans, which were called annales 
pontificum or annates maxlmi, drawn up by 
the pontifex maximus (chief pontiff). The 
practice of keeping such annals was after¬ 
wards adopted also by various private indi¬ 
viduals, as by Fabius Pictor, Calpurnius 
Piso, and others. The name hence came 
to be applied in later times to historical 
works in which the matter was treated with 
special reference to chronological arrange¬ 
ment, as to the Annals of Tacitus. 

Annam'. See Anam. 

Annamaboe (-bo'), a seaport in Western 
Africa, on the Gold Coast, 10 miles east of 
Cape Coast Castle, with some trade in gold- 
dust, ivory, palm-oil, &c. Pop. about 5000. 

An'nan, a royal and parliamentary burgh 
in Scotland, on the Annan, a little above 
its entrance into the Solway Firth, one of 
the Dumfries district of burghs. Pop. 3366. 
—The river Annan is a stream 4 0 miles 
long running through the central division 
of Dumfriesshire, to which it gives the name 
of Annandale. 

Annap'olis, the capital of Maryland, 
United States, on the Severn, near its 
mouth in Chesapeake Bay. It contains a 
college (St. John’s), a state-house, and the 
United States naval academy. Pop. 7604. 

Annap'olis, a small knvn in Nova Scotia, 
on an inlet of the Bay of Fundy, with an 

166 



ANN ARBOR - 

important herring-fishery. It is one of the 
oldest European settlements in America, 
dating from 1604. 

Ann Arbor, a town of Michigan, United 
States, on the Huron river, about 40 miles 
west of Detroit; the seat of the state uni¬ 
versity, has flour-mills, and manufactures 
of woollens, iron, and agricultural imple¬ 
ments. Pop. 1890, 9431. 

Annates (an'nats), a year’s income claimed 
for many centuries by the pope on the death 
of any bishop, abbot, or parish priest, to be 
paid by his successor. In England they 
were at first paid to the Archbishop of Can¬ 
terbury. but were afterwards appropriated 
by the popes. In 1532 the Parliament gave 
them to the crown; but Queen Anne re¬ 
stored them to the church by applying them 
to the augmentation of poor livings. See 
Queen Anne's Bounty. 

Annat'to, Arnot'to, an orange-red col¬ 
ouring matter, obtained from the pulp sur¬ 
rounding the seeds of Bixa Orellana, a shrub 
native to tropical America, and cultivated 
in Guiana, St. Domingo, and the East Indies. 
It is sometimes used as a dye for silk and 
cotton goods though it does not produce a 
very durable colour, but it is much used in 
medicine for tinging plasters and ointments, 
and to a considerable extent by farmers for 
giving a rich colour to cheese. 

Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, 
was born at Twickenham, near London, 6th 
February, 1664. She was the second daugh¬ 
ter of James II., then Duke of York, and 
Anne, his wife, daughter of the Earl of 
Clarendon. With her father’s permission 
she was educated according to the principles 
of the English Church. In 1683 she was 
married to Prince George, brother to King 
Christian V. of Denmark. On the arrival 
of the Prince of Orange in 1688, Anne 
wished to remain with her father; but she 
was prevailed upon by Lord Churchill (after¬ 
wards Duke of Marlborough) and his wife 
to join the triumphant party. After the 
death of William III. in 1702 she ascended 
the English throne. Her character was 
essentially weak, and she was governed 
first by Marlborough and his wife, and 
afterwards by Mrs. Masham, Most of the 
principal events of her reign are connected 
with the war of the Spanish Succession. 
The only important acquisition that Eng¬ 
land made by it was Gibraltar, which was 
captured in 1704. Another very impor¬ 
tant event of this reign was the union of 
Engla-bd and Scotland under the name of 

167 


-ANNEALING. 

Great Britain, which was accomplished ib 
1707. She seems to have long cherished 
the wish of securing the succession to her 
brother James, but this was frustrated by 
the internal dissensions of the cabinet. 
Grieved at the disappointment of her se- 



Queen Anne. 


cret wishes, she fell into a state of weak¬ 
ness and lethargy, and died, duly 20,1714. 
The reign of Anne was distinguished not 
only by the brilliant successes of the Brit¬ 
ish arms, but also on account of the num¬ 
ber of admirable and excellent writers who 
flourished at this time, among whom w r ere 
Pope, Swift, and Addison. Anne bore her 
husband many children, all of whom died 
in infancy except one son, the Duke of 
Gloucester, who died at the age of twelve. 

Anne (op Austria), daught r of Philip 
III. of Spain, was born at Madrid in 1602, 
and in 1615 w'as married to Louis XIII. of 
France. Richelieu, fearing the influence of 
her foreign connections, did everything he 
could to humble her. In 1643 her husband 
died, and she was left regent, but [laced 
under the control of a council. But the 
Parliament overthrew this arrangement, 
and intrusted her with full sovereign rights 
during the minority of her son Louis XIV. 
She, however, brought upon herself the 
hatred of the nobles by her boundless con¬ 
fidence in Cardinal Mazarin. and was forced 
to flee from Paris during the wars of the 
Fronde. She ultimately quelled all oppo¬ 
sition, and was able in 1661 to transmit to 
her son unimpaired the royal authority. 
She spent the remainder of her life in re¬ 
tirement, and died January 20, 1666. 

Annealing (an-el'ing), a process to which 
many articles of metal and glass are sub¬ 
jected after making, in order to render them 








ANNECY-ANNUITY. 


more tenacious, and which consists in heat¬ 
ing them and allowing them to cool slowly. 
When the metals are worked by the hammer, 
or rolled into plates, or drawn into wire, they 
acquire a certain amount of brittleness, 
which destroys their usefulness, and has to 
be remedied by annealing. The tempering 
of steel is one kind of annealing. Annealing 
is particularly employed in glass-houses, and 
consists in putting the glass vessels, as soon 
as they are formed and while they are yet 
hot, into a furnace or oven, in which they 
are suffered to cool gradually. The tough¬ 
ness is greatly increased by cooling the ar¬ 
ticles in oil. 

Annecy (an-se), an ancient town in France, 
department of Haute-Savoie, situated on 
the Lake of Annecy, 21 miles s. of Geneva; 
contains a cathedral and a ruinous old castle 
once the residence of the counts of Genevois; 
manufactures of cotton, leather, paper, and 
hardware. Pop. 9144.—The lake is about 
9 miles long and 2 broad. 

Annelida, an extensive division or class 
of Annulosa or articulate animals, so called 
because their bodies are formed of a great 
number of small rings. The earth-worm, 



Annelida.— 1 , Leech (Sanguisuga officinalis ). 2, Sgllis 
monitaris. 3, Portion of same. 

the lobworm, the nereis, and the leech be¬ 
long to this division. They have red, rarely 
yellow or green, blood circulating in a 
double system of contractile vessels, a double 
ganglionated nervous cord, and respire by 
external branchiae, internal vesicles, or bv 
the skin. Their organs of motion consist 
of bristles or seta, which are usually attached 
to the lateral surfaces of each segment, the 
bristles being borne on ‘foot processes’ or 
parapodia. The number of body segments 
varies. As many as 400 may be found in 
some sea-worms. 

Anniston, a thriving town in Calhoun 
county, Ala., 15 miles southwest of Jack¬ 
sonville. Iron mines and the works of the 
Woodstock Iron Co. are here. Pop. 9998. 

Annobon', or Annobom, a beautiful Span¬ 
ish island of Western Africa, south of the 
Bight of Biafra, about 4 miles long by 2 miles 
broad, and rising abruptly to the height of 


3000 feet, richly covered with vegetation. 
Pop. 3000. 

Annonay (an-o-na), a town in southern 
France, department of Ardeche, 37 miles 
s.s.w. of Lyons, in a picturesque situation. 
It is the most important town of Ardbche, 
manufacturing paper and glove leather to 
a large extent, also cloth, felt, silk stuffs, 
gloves, hosiery, &c. There is an obelisk in 
memory of Joseph Montgolfier of balloon 
fame, a native of the town. Pop. 14,549. 

Annotto. See Annatto. 

An'nual, in botany, a plant that springs 
from seed, grows up, produces seed, and 
then dies, all within a single year or season. 

An'nual, in literature, the name given to 
a class of publications which at one time 
enjoyed an immense yearly circulation, and 
were distinguished by great magnificence 
both of binding and illustration, which ren* 
dered them much sought after as Christmas 
and New Year presents. Their contents 
were chiefly prose tales and ballads, lyrics, 
and other poetry. The earliest was the 
Forget-me-not, started in 1822, and followed 
next year by the Friendship’s Offering. The 
Literary Souvenir was commenced in 1824, 
and the Keepsake in 1827. Among the* 
names of the editors occur those of Alaric 
A. Watts, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Harrison Ains¬ 
worth, Lady Blessington, Mary Howitt, 
&c. The popularity of the annuals reached 
its zenith about 1829, when no less than 
seventeen made their appearance; in 1856 
the Keepsake, the last of the series, ceased 
to exist. 

Annual Register, an English publication 
commenced in 1758 by Dodsley, the pub¬ 
lisher, and since continued in yearly volumes 
down to the present day. It contains a 
complete record of all the more important 
events, domestic and foreign, of each year, 
including a narrative of the proceedings in 
Parliament, and obituary notices of distin¬ 
guished persons. The historical department 
was in the first years of the Register written 
by Edmund Burke. There was also an 
Edinburgh Annual Register, the historical 
part of which was for several years contri¬ 
buted by Sir Walter Scott and afterwards 
by Robert Southey. It commenced in 1808 
and came to a close in 1827. 

Annuity, a sum of money paid annually 
to a person, and continuing either a certain 
number of years, or for an uncertain period, 
to be determined by a particular event, as 
the death of the recipient or annuitant, or 
that of the party liable to pay the annuity; 


ANNUITY — 

or the annuity may be perpetual. The 
payments are made at the end of each year, 
or semi-annually, or at other periods. An 
annuity is usually raised by the present 
payment of a certain sum as a considera¬ 
tion whereby the party making the payment, 
or some other person named by him, be¬ 
comes entitled to an annuity, and the rules 
and principles by which this present value 
is to be computed have been the subjects 
of careful investigation. The present value 
of a perpetual annuity is evidently a sum 
of money that will yield an interest equal 
to the annuity, and payable at the same 
periods; and an annuity of this descrip¬ 
tion, payable quarterly, will evidently be of 
greater value than one of the same amount 
payable annually, since the annuitant has 
the additional advantage of the interest on 
three of the quarterly payments until the 
expiration of the year. In other words, it 
requires a greater present capital to be put 
at interest to yield a given sum per annum, 
payable quarterly, than to yield the same 
annual sum payable at the end of each year. 
The present value of an annuity for a limited 
period is a sum which, if put at interest, 
will at the end of that period give an amount 
equal to the sum of all the payments of the 
annuity and interest; and, accordingly, if 
it be proposed to invest a certain sum of 
money in the purchase of an annuity for a 
given number of years the comparative value 
of the two may be precisely estimated, the 
rate of interest being given. But annuities 
for uncertain periods, and particularly life 
annuities, are more frequent, and the value 
of the annuity is computed according to the 
probable duration of the life by which it is 
limited Such annuities are often created 
by contract, whereby the government or a 
private annuity office agrees, for a certain 
sum advanced by the purchaser, to pay a 
certain sum in yearly, quarterly, or other 
periodical payments, to the person advanc¬ 
ing the money, or to some other named by 
him, during the life of the annuitant. Or 
the annuity may be granted to the annui¬ 
tant during the life of some other person, 
or during two or more joint lives, or dur¬ 
ing the life of the longest liver or survivor 
among a number of persons named. If a per¬ 
son having a certain capital, and intending to 
spend this capital and the income of it dur¬ 
ing his own life, could know precisely how 
long he should live, he might lend this capi¬ 
tal at a certain rate during his life, and by 
taking every year, besides the interest, a 

169 


ANNULOSA. 

certain amount of the capital, he might 
secure the same annual amount for his sup¬ 
port during his life in such manner that he 
should have the same sum to spend every 
year, and consume precisely his whole capi¬ 
tal during his life. But since he does not 
know how long he is to live he agrees with 
the government or an annuity office to take 
the risk of the duration of his life, and 
agree to pay him a certain annuity during 
his life in exchange for the capital which 
he proposes to invest in this way. The 
probable duration of his life therefore be¬ 
comes a subject of computation; and for 
the purpose of making this calculation tables 
of longevity are made by noting the propor¬ 
tions of deaths at certain ages in the same 
country or district. Founding on a com- 
j arison of many such tables, the British 
government has empowered the postmas¬ 
ter general to grant annuities at the follow¬ 
ing rates, which are probably more closely 
adjusted to their actual value than those 
of insurance companies and other dealers 
in annuities: — To secure an immediate 
annuity of £100, the cost is, for males of 
20 years, £2279, 3s. 4*7.; for females of same 
age, £2482, 10s.; for males of 30 years, 
£2045, 8s. 4rZ.; for females, £2258, 6s. 8 d.\ 
for males of 40 years, £1789, 6s. 8 d.\ for 
females, £1990;formales of 60,£1148,6s.8d.; 
females, £1275, 8s. 4 d .; and so on. In the 
United States the granting of annuities is 
conducted by private companies or corpo¬ 
rations. The following are the approved 
rates of the best managed companies : In 
consideration of $1000 paid to a company 
the annuity granted to a person aged 40 
would be $52.75; aged 45, $58.10 ; aged 50, 
$64.70; aged 55, $73.50; aged 60, $86.20; 
aged 65, $100; aged 70, $123.45; aged 75, 
$145.95 ; aged SO, $180.15. The purchase 
of annuities, as a system, has never gained 
much foothold in America—the endow¬ 
ment plan of life insurance, by which after 
the lapse of a term of years the insured re¬ 
ceives a sum in bulk, being preferred. 

Annuloi'da, in some modern zoological 
classifications, a division (sub-kingdom) of 
animals, including the Rotifera, Scolecida 
(tape-worms, &c.), all which are more or 
less ring-like in appearance, and the Echino- 
dermata, whose embryos show traces of 
annulation. 

Annulo'sa, a division (sub-kingdom) of 
animals regarded by some as synonymous 
with the Arthropoda or Articulata; ac¬ 
cording to other systeraatists, including 



ANNUNCIATION 


ANOMALY. 


both the Articulata and Annulata or 
worms. 

Annunciation, the declaration of the 
angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary informing 
her that she was to become the mother of 
our Lord.— Annunciation or Lady Day is a 
feast of the church in honour of the annun¬ 
ciation, celebrated on the 25th of March.— 
The Italian order of Knights of the Annun¬ 
ciation, was instituted by Amadeus VI., 
duke of Savoy, in 1360. The king is always 
grand-master. The knights must be of high 
rank, and must already be members of the 
order of St. Mauritius and St. Lazarus. 
The decoration of the order consists of a 
golden shield suspended to a chain or collar 
of roses and knots, the letters F. E. R. T. 
being inscribed on the roses, and standing 
for b'ortitudoejus Rhodum tenuit (its bravery 
held Rhodes).—There are two orders of nuns 
of the Annunciation, one originally French, 
founded in 1501 by Joanna of Valois, the 
other Italian, founded in 1604 by Maria 
Vittoria Fornari of Genoa. 

An'oa, an animal (Anoa depressicornis) 
closely allied to the buffalo, about the size 
of an average sheep, very wild and fierce, 
inhabiting the rocky and mountainous loca¬ 
lities of the island of Celebes. The horns 
are straight, thick at the root, and set 
nearly in a line with the forehead. 

Ano'bium, a genus of coleopterous in¬ 
sects, the larvae of which often do much 
damage by their boring into old wood, in¬ 
cluding several known by the name of 
death- watch. A. striatum, a common species, 
when frightened, is much given to feigning 
death. 

An'ode (Gr. ana, up, hodos, way), the 
positive pole of the voltaic current, being 
that part of the surface of a decomposing 
body which the electric current enters: 
opposed to cathode (Gr. kata, down, hodos, 
way), the way by which it departs. 

An'odon, Anodon'ta, a genus of lamelli- 
branchiate bivalves, including the fresh¬ 
water mussels, without or with very slight 
hinge-teeth. See Mussel. 

An'odyne, a medicine, such as an opiate 
or narcotic, which allays pain. 

Anointing, rubbing the body or some 
part of it with oil, often perfumed. From 
time immemorial the nations of the East 
have been in the habit of anointing them¬ 
selves for the sake of health and beauty. 
The Greeks and Romans anointed them¬ 
selves after the bath. Wrestlers anointed 
themselves in order to render it more diffi¬ 


cult for their antagonists to get hold of 
them. In Egypt it seems to have been 
common to anoint the head of guests when 
they entered the house where they were to 
be entertained, as shown in the cut. In the 
Mosaic law a sacred character was attached 
to the anoint¬ 
ing of the gar¬ 
ments of the 
priests and 
things belong¬ 
ing to the ce¬ 
remonial of 
worship. The 
Jewish priests 
and kings were 
anointed when 
inducted into 
office, and were 
called the an¬ 
ointed of the Lord, to show that their per¬ 
sons were sacred and their office from God. 
In the Old Testament also the prophecies 
respecting the Redeemer style him Messias, 
that is, the Anointed, which is also the 
meaning of his Greek name Christ. The 
custom of anointing still exists in the Roman 
Catholic Church in the ordination of priests 
and the confirmation of believers and the 
sacrament of extreme unction. The cere¬ 
mony is also frequently a part of the coron¬ 
ation of kings. 

Anom'alure (Anomalurus), a genus of 
rodent animals inhabiting the west coast of 
Africa, resembling the flying-squirrels, but 
having the under surface of the tail ‘ furnished 
for some distance from the roots with a series 
of large horny scales, which, when pressed 
against the trunk of a tree, may subserve 
the same purpose as those instruments with 
which a man climbs up a telegraph pole to 
set the wires.’ They are called also scale- 
tails, or scale-tailed squirrels, but some au¬ 
thorities class them with the porcupines 
rather than the squirrels. There are several 
species of them, but little is known of their 
habits. 

Anom'aly, in astronomy, the angle which 
a line drawn from a planet to the sun has 
passed through since the planet was last at 
its perihelion or nearest distance to the sun. 
The anomalistic year is the interval between 
two successive times at which the earth is 
in perihelion, or 365 days 6 hours 13 min¬ 
utes 45 seconds. In consequence of the 
advance of the earth’s perihelion among the 
stars in the same direction as the earth’s 
motion and of the precession of the equi- 

170 



Egyptian anointing a Guest. 










ANOMURA-ANSELM. 


noxes, which carries the equinoxes back in 
the opposite direction to the earth’s motion, 
the anomalistic year is longer than the 
sidereal year, and still longer than the ti'o- 
pical or common year. 

Anomura, a section of the crustaceans of 
the order Decapoda, with irregular tails not 
formed to assist in swimming, including the 
hermit-crabs and others. 

Ano'na, a genus of plants, the type of the 
nat. order Anonaceae. A. squamosa (sweet- 
sop) grows in the West Indian Islands, and 
yields an edible fruit having a thick, sweet, 
luscious pulp. A. muricata (sour-sop) is 
cultivated in the West and East Indies; it 
produces a large pear-shaped fruit, of a 
greenish colour, containing an agreeable 
slightly acid pulp. The genus produces 
other edible fruits, as the common custard- 
apple or bul¬ 
lock’s heart, 
from A. reticu¬ 
lata, and the 
cherimoyer of 
Peru, from A. 

Cherimolia. 

Anona'cese, 
a natural order 
of trees and 
shrubs, having 
simple, alter¬ 
nate leaves, 
destitute of sti¬ 
pules, by which 
character they 
are distin¬ 
guished from 
the Magnoli- 
aceae, to which they are otherwise closely 
allied. They are mostly tropical plants of 
the Old and the New World, and are gener¬ 
ally aromatic. See Anona. 

Anon'ymous, literally ‘without name,’ ap¬ 
plied to anything which is the work of a 
person whose name is unknown or w r ho 
keeps his name secret. Pseudonym is a 
term used for an assumed name. The 
knowledge of the anonymous and pseudo¬ 
nymous literature is indispensable to the 
bibliographer, and large dictionaries giving 
the titles and writers of such works have 
been published. 

Anoplothe'rium, an extinct genus of the 
Ungulata or Hoofed Quadrupeds, forming 
the type of a distinct family, which were in 
many respects intermediate between the 
swine and the true ruminants. These 
apimals were pig-like in form, but possessed 

171 



Anona or Sour-sop (AnOna 
muricCita). 


long tails, and had a cleft hoof, with two 
rudimentary toes. Some of them were as 
small as a guinea-pig, others as large as an 
ass. Six incisors, two canines, eight pre¬ 
molars, and six molars existed in each jaw, 
the series being continuous, no interval ex¬ 
isting in the jaw. A. commune, from the 
Eocene rocks, is a familiar species. 

Anoplu'ra, an order of apterous insects, 
of which the type is the genus Pediculus or 
louse. 

Anopshehr. See Anupshalir. 

Anorexia. See Appetite. 

Anos'mia, a disease consisting in a diminu¬ 
tion or destruction of the power of smell¬ 
ing, sometimes constitutional, but most fre¬ 
quently caused by strong and repeated 
stimulants, as snuff, applied to the olfactory 
nerves. 

Anoura. See Anura. 

Anquetil-Duperron (ank-tel-du-pa-ron), 
Abraham Hyacinthe, a French orientalist, 
born 1731, died 1805. He studied theology 
for some time, but soon devoted himself to 
the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. 
His zeal for the Oriental languages induced 
him to set out for India, where he prevailed 
on some of the Parsee priests to instruct him 
in the Zend and Pehlevi and to give him 
some of the Zoroastrian books. In 1762 he 
returned to France with a valuable collec¬ 
tion of MSS. In 1771 he published his 
Zend-Avesta, a translation of the Vendidad, 
and other sacred books, which excited great 
sensation. Among his other works are 
L’lnde en Rapport avec l’Europe (1790), 
and a selection from the Vedas. His know¬ 
ledge of the Oriental languages was by no 
means exact. 

Ansbach. See Anspach. 

An'selm, St., a celebrated Christian phi¬ 
losopher and theologian, born at Aosta, in 
Piedmont, in 1033; died at Canterbury 
1109. At the age of twenty-seven (1060) 
he became a monk at Bee, in Normandy, 
whither he had been attracted by the celeb¬ 
rity of Lanfranc. Three years later he was 
elected prior, and in 1078 he was chosen 
abbot, which he remained for fifteen years. 
During this period of his life he wrote his 
first philosophical and religious works: the 
dialogues on Truth and Free-will, and the 
treatises Monologion and Proslogion; and 
at the same time his influence made itself so 
felt among the monks under his charge that 
Bee became the chief seat of learning in 
Europe. In 1093 Anselm was offered by 
William Rufus the archbishopric of Canter* 




ANSGAR-ANSTER. 


bury, and accepted it, though with great 
reluctance, and with the condition that all 
the lands belonging to the see should be 
restored. William II. soon quarrelled with 
the archbishop, who would show no subser¬ 
vience to him, and would persist in acknow¬ 
ledging Pope Urban in opposition to the 
antipope Clement. William ultimately had 
to give way. He both himself acknow¬ 
ledged Urban and conferred the pallium 
upon Anselm. The king became his bitter 
enemy, however, and so great were Anselm’s 
difficulties that in 1097 he set out for Rome 
to consult with the pope. Urban received 
him with great distinction, but did not ven¬ 
ture really to take the side of the prelate 
against the king, though William had refused 
to receive Anselm again as archbishop, and 
had seized on the revenues of the see of 
Canterbury, which he retained till his death 
in 1100. Anselm accordingly remained 
abroad, where he wrote most of his cele¬ 
brated treatise on the atonement, entitled 
Cur Deus Homo (Why God was made Man; 
translated into English, Oxford, 1858). 
When William was succeeded by Henry I. 
Anselm was recalled; but Henry insisted 
that he should submit to be reinvested in 
his see by himself, although the popes 
claimed the right of investing for them- 
selves alone. Much negotiation followed, 
and Henry did not surrender his claims till 
1107, when Anselm’s long struggle on behalf 
of the rights of the church came to an end. 
Anselm was a great scholar, a deep and ori¬ 
ginal thinker, and a man of the utmost saint¬ 
liness and piety. The chief of his writings 
are the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the 
Cur Deus Homo. The first is an attempt 
to prove inductively the existence of God 
by pure reason without the aid of Scripture 
or authority; the second is an attempt to 
prove the same by the deductive method; 
the Cur Deus Homo is intended to prove 
the necessity of the incarnation. Among 
his numerous other writings are more than 
400 letters. His life was written by his 
domestic chaplain and companion, Eadmer, 
a monk of Canterbury. 

Ans'gar, or Anshar, called the Apostle 
of the North, was born in 801 in Picardy, 
and he took the monastic vows while still 
in his boyhood. In the midst of many dif¬ 
ficulties he laboured as a missionary in 
Denmark and Sweden; dying in 864 or 865, 
with the reputation of having undertaken, if 
not the first, the most successful attempts for 
the propagation of Christianity in the North. 


An'son, George, Lord, celebrated Eng¬ 
lish navigator; born 1697, died 1762. He 
entered the navy at an early age and be¬ 
came a commander in 1722, and captain in 
17z4. He was for a long time on the South 
Carolina station. In 1740 he was made 
commander of a fleet sent to the South Sea, 
directed against the trade and colonies of 
Spain. The expedition consisted of five men- 
of-war and three smaller vessels, which 
carried 1400 men. After much suffering 
atid many stirring adventures he reached 
the coast of Peru, made several prizes, and 
captured and burned the city of Paita. His 
squadron was now reduced to one ship, the 
Centurion, but with it he took the Spanish 
treasure galleon from Acapulco, and arrived 
in England in 1744, with treasure to the 
amount of $2,500,000, having circumnavi¬ 
gated the globe. His adventures and dis¬ 
coveries are described in the well-known 
Anson s Voyage, compiled from materials 
furnished by Anson. A few days after his 
return he was made rear-admiral of the 
blue, and not long after rear-admiral of the 
white. His victory over the French admiral 
Jonquihre, near Cape Finisterre in 1747, 
i-aised him to the peerage, with the title of 
Lord Anson, Baron of Soberton. Four 
years afterwards he was made first lord of 
the admiralty. In 1758 he commanded the 
fleet before Brest, protected the landing of 
the British at St. Malo, Cherbourg, &c., 
and received the repulsed troops into his 
vessels. 

Ansonia, New Haven co., Conn., taken 
from Derby in 1889. Pop. 1890, 10,342. 

Anspach (an'spaA), or Ansbach, a town 
in Bavaria, at the junction of the Holzbach 
with the Lower Rezat, 24 miles south-west 
of Niirnberg. Anspach gave its name to an 
ancient principality or margravate, which 
had a territory of about 1300 square miles, 
with 300,000 inhabitants, in the end of the 
eighteenth century. The last margrave sold 
his possessions in 1791 to Prussia. It was 
occupied by the French in 1806, and trans¬ 
ferred by Napoleon to Bavaria. The town 
has manufactures of trimmings, buttons, 
straw-wares, &c. Pop. 14,195. 

An'sted, David Thomas, an English geo¬ 
logist, born 1814, died 1880. He was pro¬ 
fessor of geology at King’s College, London, 
and assistant-secretary to the Geological 
Society, whose quarterly journal he edited 
for many years. His writings on geology 
were standard authorities. 

An'ster, John, LL.D., professor of civj] 
172 



ANSTtiY — 

l&to in the University of Dublin, born in 
co. Cork, 1793; died 1867. He published a 
volume of poems, and was a frequent con¬ 
tributor to Blackwood's Magazine, the Dub¬ 
lin University Magazine, the .North British 
Keview, &c., but is chieriy known by his tine 
translation of Goethe’s Faust, 1835-64. 

An'stey, Christopher, an English poet, 
born 1724, died 1805. He was author of 
The New Bath Guide, a humorous and satiri¬ 
cal production describing fashi >nahle life at 
Bath in the form of a series of letters in 
different varieties of metre, which had a 
great reputation in its day, but is now al¬ 
most forgotten. 

Anstruther (an'strufA-er; popularly an'- 
ster), Easter and W v ster, two small royal 
and parliamentary burghs of Scotland, in 
Fifeshire, forming, with the contiguous royal 
burgh of Cellardyke or Nether Kilrenny, 
one fishing and seaport town. Total pop. 
4712. 

Ant, the common name of hymenopterous 
(or membranous-winged) insects of various 
genera, of the family Formickke, found in 
most temperate and tropical regions. They 
are small but powerful insects, and have 
long been noted for their remarkable intel¬ 
ligence and interesting habits. They live 
in communities regulated by definite laws, 
each member of the society bearing a well- 
defined and separate part in the work of 
the colony. Each community consists of 
males; of females much larger than the 
males; and of barren females, otherwise 
called neuters, workers, or nurses. The 
neuters are wingless, and the males and 
females only acquire wings for their ‘nup¬ 
tial flight,’ after which the males perish, 
and the few females which escape the pur¬ 
suit of their numerous enemies divest them¬ 
selves of their wings, and either return to 
established nests, or become the found¬ 
resses of new colonies. The neuters perform 
all the labours of the ant-hill or abode of the 
community; they excavate the galleries, 
procure food, and feed the larvae or young 
ants, which are destitute of organs of mo¬ 
tion. In fine weather they carefully convey 
them to the surface for the benefit of the 
sun's heat, and as attentively carry them to 
a place of safety either when bad weather 
is threatened or the ant-hill is disturbed. 
In like manner they watch over the safety 
of the nymphs or pupae about to acquire 
their perfect growth. Some communities 
possess a special type of neuters, known as 
‘soldiers,’ from the duties that specially 

173 


-ANTACID. 

fall upon them, and from their powerful 
biting jaws. There is a very considerable 
variety in the materials, size, and form of 
ant-hills, or nests, according to the peculiar 
nature or instinct of the species. Most of 
American ants form nests in woods, fields, 
or gardens, their abodes being generally in 
the form of small mounds rising above the 
surface of the ground and containing numer 
ous galleries and apartments. Some exca 
vate nests in old tree-trunks. Houses built 
by the common wood-ant (Formica rufa) 
are frequently as large as a small hay-cock. 
Some ants live on animal food, very quickly 
picking quite clean the skeleton of any dead 
animal they may light on. Others live on 
saccharine matter, being very fond of the 
sweet substance, called honey-dew, which 
exudes from the bodies of Aphides, or plant- 
lice. These they sometimes keep in their 
nests, and sometimes tend on the plants where 
they feed; sometimes they even superintend 
their breeding. By stroking the aphides 
with their antennae they cause them to emit 
the sweet fluid, which the ants then greedily 
sip up. Various other insects are looked 
after by ants in a similar manner, or are 
found in their nests. It has been observed 
that some species, like the Sanguinary 
Ant (Formica sanguined), resort to violence 
to obtain working ants of other species for 
their own use, plundering the nests of suit¬ 
able kinds of their larvae and pupae, which they 
carry off to their own nests to be carefully 
reared and kept as slaves. In temperate 
countries male and female ants survive, at 
most, till autumn, or to the commencement 
of cool weather, though a very large propor¬ 
tion of them cease to exist long previous to 
that time. The neuters pass the winter in 
a state of torpor, and of course require no 
food. The only time when they require food 
is during the season of activity, when they 
have a vast number of young to feed. Some 
ants of southern Europe feed on grain, and 
store it up in their nests for use when re¬ 
quired. Some species have stings as wea¬ 
pons, others only their powerful mandibles, 
or an acrid and pungent fluid (formic acid) 
which they can emit. The name ant is also 
given to the neuropterous insects otherwise 
called Termites. See Termites. 

Antacid, an alkali, or any remedy for acid¬ 
ity in the stomach. Dyspepsia and diarrhoea 
are the diseases in which antacids are chiefly 
employed. The principal antacids in use are 
magnesia, lime, and their carbonates, and 
the carbonates of potash and soda. 




ANTAEUS-ANT-EATER. 


Antse'us, the giant son of Poseidon (Nep¬ 
tune) and Ge (the Earth), who was invin¬ 
cible so long as he was in contact with the 
earth. Heracles (Hercules) grasped him in 
his arms and stifled him suspended in the air. 

Antakieh, Antakia. See Antioch. 

Antal'kali, a substance which neutralizes 
an alkali, and is used medicinally to coun¬ 


teract an alkaline tendency in the system. 
All true acids have this power. 

Antananarivo (an-tan-an-a-re'vo), the 
capital of Madagascar, situated in the cem 
tral province of Ime'rina; of late years al¬ 
most entirely rebuilt, its old timber houses 
having been replaced by buildings of sun- 
dried brick on European models. It con- 



Antananarivo. 


tains two royal palaces, immense timber 
structures, one of which has been lately 
surrounded with a massive stone verandah 
with lofty corner towers. It has manufac¬ 
tures of metal work, cutlery, silk, &c., and 
exports sugar, soap, and oil. Pop. about 
100,000. 

An'tar, an Arabian warrior and poet of 
the sixth century, author of one of the 
seven Moallakas hung up in the Kaaba at 
Mecca; hero of a romance analogous in 
Arabic literature to the Arthurian legend 
of the English. The romance of Antar, 
which has been called the Iliad of the 
Desert, is composed in rhythmic prose in¬ 
terspersed with fragments of verse, many 
of which are attributed to Antar himself, 
and has been generally ascribed to Asmai 
(b. 740 a.d,; d. about 830 a.d.), preceptor 
to Harun-al-Rashid. 

Antarctic (ant-iirk'tik), relating to the 
southern pole or to the region near it. The 
Antarctic Circle is a circle parallel to the 
equator and distant from the south pole 


23° 28', marking the area within which the 
sun does not set when on the tropic of Cap¬ 
ricorn. The Antarctic Circle has been ar¬ 
bitrarily fixed on as the limits of the An¬ 
tarctic Ocean, it •being the average limit of 
the pack-ice; but the name is often extended 
to embrace a much wider area. The lands 
in or near the Antarctic Circle are but im¬ 
perfectly known, the work of exploration 
having been hitherto baffled by what seems 
an unsurmountable ice-barrier. Sir James 
Eoss reached the highest south latitude yet 
attained in 1841-42, discovering Victoria 
Land, (extending to about 79° s. lat.) with 
its volcanoes Erebus (12,400 ft.) and Terror 
(10,900 ft.). The South Shetland Islands, 
Enderby Land, Graham’s Land, &c., have 
also been discovered in this ocean. See 
South Polar Expeditions. 

Ant-eater, a name given to mammals of 
various genera that prey chiefly on ants, 
but usually confined to the genus Mi/rme- 
cophdga , order Edentata. In this genus 
the head is remarkably elongated, the jaws 

174 




































ANTECEDENT ANTH ELION. 


destitute of teeth, and the mouth furnished 
with a long, extensile tongue covered with 
glutinous saliva, by the aid of which the 
animals secure their insect prey. The eyes 
are particularly small, the ears short and 
round, and the legs, especially the anterior, 
very robust, and furnished with long, com¬ 
pressed, acute nails, admirably adapted for 



Ant-bear (Myrmecophdga jubata). 


breaking into the ant-hills. The most re¬ 
markable species is the Myrmecophaga ju- 
bdta, or ant-bear, a native of the warmer 
parts of South America. It is from 4 to 5 
feet in length from the tip of the muzzle to 
the origin of the black bushy tail, which is 
about two feet long. The body is covered 
with long hair, particularly along the neck 
and back. It is a harmless and solitary 
animal, and spends most of its time in sleep. 
Some are adapted for climbing trees in 
quest of the insects on which they feed, 
having prehensile tails. All are natives of 
South America. The name ant-eater is also 
given to the pangolins and to the aardvark. 
The echidna of Australia is sometimes called 
porcupine ant-eater. 

Antecedent, in grammar, the noun to 
which a relative or other pronoun refers; as, 
Solomon was the prince who built the temple, 
where the word prince is the antecedent of 
who. —In logic, that member of a hypothet¬ 
ical or conditional proposition wdiich con¬ 
tains the condition, and which is introduced 
by if or some equivalent word or words; as, 
if the sun is fixed, the earth must move. 
Here the first and conditional proposition is 
the antecedent, the second the consequent. 

Antedilu'vian, before the flood or deluge 
of Noah’s time; relating to what happened 
before the deluge. In geology the term has 
been applied to organisms, traces of which 
are found in a fossil state in formations pre¬ 
ceding the Diluvial, particularly to extinct 
animals such as the paleotherium, the 
mastodon, &c. 

An'telope, the name given to the members 
175 


of a large family of Ruminant Ungulata or 
Hoofed Mammalia, closely resembling the 
Deer in general appearance, but essentially 
different in nature from the latter animals. 
They are included with the Sheep and Oxen 
in the family of the Cavicornia or ‘Hollow¬ 
horned’ Ruminants. Their horns, unlike 
those of the Deer, are not deciduous, but 
are permanent; are never branched, but are 
often twisted spirally, and may be borne 
by both sexes. They are found in greatest 
number and variety in Africa. Well-known 
species are the chamois (European), the 
gazelle, the addax, the eland, the koodoo, 
the gnu, the springbok, the sasin or Indian 
antelope, and the prongbuck of America. 

Anten'nse, the name given to the mov¬ 
able jointed organs of touch and hearing at¬ 
tached to the heads of insects, myriapods, 
&c., and commonly called horns or feelers. 
They present a very great variety of forms. 



Antennae. 



1, 1, Filiform Antennae of Cucujo Firefly of Brazil 
(Pyrophdrus luminosus). 2, Denticulate Antenna; 3, Bi- 
pinnate; 4, Lamellicom; 5, Clavate; 6, Geniculate; 
7, Antenna and Antennule of Crustacean. 


Antequera (an-te-ka/ra), a city of An¬ 
dalusia, in Spain, in the province of Malaga, 
a place of some importance under the 
Romans, with a ruined Moorish castle. 
Manufacturers of wollens, leather, soap, &c. 
Pop. 27,201. 

Ant'eros, in Greek mythology, the god of 
mutual love. According to some, however, 
Anteros is the enemy of love, or the god of 
antipathy; he was also said to punish those 
who did not return the love of others. 

Anthe'lion, pi. Anthelia, a luminous ring, 
or rings, seen by an observer, especially 
in alpine and polar regions, around the 
shadow of his head projected on a cloud or 
fog-bank, or on grass covered with dew, 50 
or 60 yards distant, and opposite the sun 








ANTHELMlNTHICS-ANTHRAX. 


when rising or setting. It is due to the 
diffraction of light. 

Anthelmin'thics, Anthelmin'tics, a class 
of remedies used to destroy worms when 
lodged in the alimentary canal; classed as 
vermicides or vermifuges, according as the 
object is to kill the worms, or to expel 
them by purgation. 

An'them, originally a hymn sung in alter¬ 
nate parts; in modern usage, a sacred tune 
or piece of music set to words taken from 
the Psalms or other parts of the Scriptures, 
first introduced into church service in Eliza¬ 
beth’s reign ; a developed motet. The an¬ 
them may be for one, two, or any number 
of voices, but seldom exceeds five parts, and 
may or may not have an organ accompani¬ 
ment written for it. 

Anthe'mion, an ornament or ornamental 
series used in Greek and Roman decoration, 



Anthemion. 


which is derived from floral forms, more 
especially the honeysuckle. It was much 
used for the ornamentation of friezes and 
interiors, for the decoration of fictile vases, 
the borders of dresses, &c. 

An'themis, a genus of composite plants, 
comprising the camomile or chamomile. 

Anthe'mius, a Greek mathematician and 
architect of Lydia; designed the church of 
St. Sophia at Constantinople, and is cred¬ 
ited with the invention of the 
dome; died a.d. 534. 

An'ther, the male organ of 
the flower; that part of the 
stamen which is filled with 
pollen. 

Antheste'ria, an annual 
Greek festival held in honour 
of all the gods, more particu¬ 
larly of Bacchus or Dionysus, 
and to celebrate the beginning 
of spring, and the season when 
the wine of the previous vint¬ 
age was considered fit for use. 

Anthocy'anin, the blue colour of flowers, 
a pigment obtained from those petals of 
flowers which are blue by digesting them in 
spirits of wine. 

Anthol'ogy (Gr. anthos , a flower, and 


legein, to gather), the name given to several 
collections of short poems which have come 
down from antiquity. The first who com¬ 
piled a Greek anthology was Meleager, a 
Syrian, about 60 B.c. He entitled his col¬ 
lection, which contained selections from 
forty-six poets besides many pieces of his 
own, the Garland; a continuation of this 
work by Philip of Thessalonica in the age 
of Tiberius was the first entitled Anthology. 
Later collections are that of Constantine Ce- 
phalas, in the tenth century, who made much 
use of the earlier ones, and that of Maximus 
Planudes, in the fourteenth century, a monk 
of Constantinople, whose anthology is a 
tasteless series of extracts from the Antho¬ 
logy of Cephalas, with some additions. The 
treasures contained in both, increased with 
fragments of the older poets, idyls of the 
bucolic poets, the hymns of Callimachus, 
epigrams from monuments and other works, 
have been published in modern times as the 
Greek Anthology. There is no ancient 
Latin anthology, the oldest being that of 
Scaliger (1573). There are also Arabic, 
Persian, Turkish, &c., anthologies. 

An'thon, Charles, LL.D., an American 
editor of classical school-books, and of works 
intended to facilitate the study of Greek 
and Latin literature; born 1797, died 1867. 
He was long a professor in Columbia College, 
New York. 

An'thony, St., the founder of monastic 
institutions; born near Heraclea, in Upper 
Egypt, a.d. 251. Giving up all his property 
he retired to the desert, where he was fol¬ 
lowed by a number of disciples, who thus 
formed the first community of monks. He 
died at the age of 105.— St. Anthony's Fire, 
a name given to erysipelas. 

An'thracite, glance or blind coal, a non- 
bituminous coal of a shining lustre, ap¬ 
proaching to metallic, and which burn* 
without smoke, with a weak or no flame, 
and with intense heat. It consists of, on an 
average, 90 per cent carbon, 3 hydrogen, 
and 5 ashes. It has some of the properties 
of coke or charcoal, and, like that substance, 
represents an extreme metamorphism of coal 
under the influence of heat or of volcanic 
disturbance. It is found in England, Scot¬ 
land, and Ireland, and in large quantities 
in the United States, chiefly in Pennsyl¬ 
vania. 

An'thrax, a fatal disease to which cattle, 
horses, sheep, and other animals are subject, 
always associated with the presence of an * 
extremely minute micro-organism ( Bacillus 

176 



a, Ovules. 
bb, Anthers, 
c, Stigma. 







ANTHROPOLATRY-ANTIBES. 


ttnthracis ) in the blood. It frequently as¬ 
sumes an epizootic form, and extends over 
large districts, affecting all classes of animals 
which are exposed to the exciting causes. 
It is also called splenic fever, and is com¬ 
municable to man, appearing as carbuncle, 
malignant pustule, or wool-sorter’s disease. 

Anthropol'atry, the worship of man, a 
word always employed in reproach; applied 
by the Apollinarians, who denied Christ’s 
perfect humanity, towards the orthodox 
Christians. 

Anthro'polite, a petrifaction of the human 
body or skeleton, or of parts of the body, 
by the incrusting action of calcareous waters, 
and hence hardly to be considered fossil or 
sub-fossil. 

Anthropol'ogy, the science of man and 
mankind, including the study of man’s 
place in nature, that is, of the measure of 
his agreement with and divergence from 
other animals; of his physical structure and 
psychological nature, together with the ex¬ 
tent to which these act and react on each 
other; and of the various tribes of men, deter¬ 
mining how these may have been produced 
or modified by external conditions, and con¬ 
sequently taking account also of the advance 
or retrogression of the human race. It puts 
under contribution all sciences which have 
man for their object, as archaeology, com¬ 
parative anatomy, physiology, psychology, 
climatology, &c. See Ethnology. 

Anthropom'etry, the systematic examina¬ 
tion of the height, weight, and other physical 
characteristics of the human body. It was 
shown in the British Association Report of 
1883 that variations in stature, weight, and 
complexion, existing in different districts of 
the British islands, are chiefly due to differ¬ 
ence of racial origin. The Scotch male 
adults stand first in height (68'71 inches), 
the Irish second (67'90 inches), the English 
third (67'66 inches), and the Welsh last 
(66'66 inches). In weight the Scotch take 
the first place (165'3 lbs.), the Welsh the 
second (158*3 lbs.), the English the third 
(155'0 lbs.), and the Irish the last (1541 
lbs.). The average height of adult females 
is 4'71 inches less than the male average, 
and their average weight 32'2 lbs. under 
that of the males. The average height of 
the adult males of the principal races or 
nationalities of the world may be given as 
under; but it is acknowledged that more 
numerous measurements might alter some 
of the figures considerably:—Polynesians 
69‘33 in., Patagonians 69 in., Negroes of the 
vol. i. 177 


Congo 69 in., Scotch 68*71 in., Iroquois 
Indians 68'28 in., Irish 67*90 in., United 
States (whites) 67*67 in., English 67*66 in., 
Norwegians 67*66 in., Zulus 67*19 in.,Welsh 
66*66 in., Danes 66*65 in., Dutch 66*62 in., 
American Negroes 66*62 in., Hungarians 
66*58 in., Germans 66*54 in., Swiss 66*43 
in., Belgians, 66*38 in., French 66 23 in., 
Berbers 66*10 in., Arabs 66*08 in., Russians 
66*04 in.,Italians 66 in., Spaniards 65*66 in., 
Esquimaux 65*10 in., Papuans 64*78 in., 
Hindus 64*76 in., Chinese 64*17 in., Poles 
63*87 in., Finns 63*60 in., Japanese 63*11 
in., Peruvians 63 in., Malays 62*34 in., 
Lapps 59*2 in., Bosjesmans 52*78 in. Gen¬ 
eral average 65**25 in. Interesting results 
would also be obtained by finding the chest- 
measurement, length of arms and legs, &c., 
of the different peoples. 

Anthropomor phism, the representation 
or conception of the Deity under a human 
form, or with human attributes and affec¬ 
tions. Anthropomorphism is founded in 
the natural inaptitude of the human mind 
forconceivingspiritual thingsexcept through 
sensuous images, and in its consequent ten¬ 
dency to accept such expressions as those of 
Scripture when it speaks of the eye, the ear, 
and the hand of God, of his seeing and hear¬ 
ing, of his remembering and forgetting, of 
his making man in his own image, &c., in a 
too literal sense. The term is also applied 
to that doctrine which attributes to animals 
mental faculties of the same nature as those 
of man, though much lower in degree: 
strictly called biological anthropomorphism, 
to distinguish it from anthropomorphism 
proper, or theological anthropomorphism. 

Anthropoph'agi, the name given to those 
individuals or tribes by whom human flesh 
is eaten: man-eaters, cannibals. That there 
are nations who eat the flesh of enemies 
slain in battle, for example the Niam-Niam 
of Central Africa, and till recently the New 
Zealanders, is well known; but there are 
none who make human flesh their usual 
food. The Caribs are said to have been 
cannibals at the time of the Spanish con¬ 
quest of America, and the word ‘cannibal’ 
is derived from their name. 

Anthus. See Pipit. 

Antibes (an-teb), a fortified town and 
seaport of France, dep. Alpes-Maritimes, on 
the Mediterranean, 11 miles s.s.w. of Nice; 
founded ab. 340 B.c. Traces of a Roman 
circus and part of an aqueduct still remain; 
and urns, lamps, &c., have been found. Pop. 
5923. 


12 



ANTI-BURGHER 


ANTIGONISH. 


Anti-burgher. See Burgher. 

An'tichlor, the name given to any chemical 
substance, such as hyposulphite of sodium, 
employed to remove the small quantity of 
chlorine which obstinately adheres to the 
fibres of the cloth when goods are bleached 
by means of chlorine. 

An'tichrist, a word occurring in the first 
and second epistles of St. John, and nowhere 
else in Scripture, in passages having an 
evident reference to a personage real or 
symbolical mentioned or alluded to in vari¬ 
ous other passages both of the Old and New 
Testaments. In every age the church has 
held through all its sects some definite ex¬ 
pectation of a formidable adversary of truth 
and righteousness prefigured under this name. 
Thus Roman Catholics have found Anti¬ 
christ in heresy, and Protestants in Roman¬ 
ism. In one point the sects have generally 
been agreed, namely, in regarding the vari¬ 
ous intimations on this subject in the Old 
and New 'Testaments as a homogeneous 
declaration or warning, inspired by the spirit 
of prophecy, of danger to the true religion 
from some disaffection and revolt organized 
in the latter days by Satan. Most modern 
critics take a different view of the matter. 
They do not regard the various Scriptural 
writers who have dealt with this subject 
as having had any common inspiration or 
design. They believe that each writer 
from his own point of view, guided by mere 
human sagacity, gives expression in his pre¬ 
dictions to his own individual apprehensions, 
or narrates as prediction what he already 
knows. It is the near political horizon 
which suggests the danger, or contemporary 
history the substance of the prophecy; thus 
the Antichrist of Daniel is Antiochus Epi- 
phanes, that of St. John Nero, that of St. 
Paul some adversary of Christianity about 
to appear in the time of the Emperor Clau¬ 
dius. 

Anticli'max, a sudden declension of a 
writer or speaker from lofty to mean 
thoughts or language, as in the well-known 
lines: 

Next conies Dalhousie, the great god of war, 

Lieutenant-colonel to the Earl of Mar. 

Anticli'nal line or axis, in geology, the 
ridge of a wave-like curve made by a series 
of superimposed strata, the strata dipping 
from it on either side as from the ridge of a 
house: a synclinal line runs along the trough 
of such a wave. 

Anti-Corn-Law League, an association 
formed in England in 1836 to procure the 


repeal of the laws regulating or forbidding 
the exportation of corn. The object of the 
league was attained in 1846. 

Anticos'ti, an island of Canada, in the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence, 125 miles long 
by 30 miles broad. The interior is moun- 



aa a, Anticlinal Line, b b. Synclinal Line. 


tainous and wooded, but there is much good 
land, and it is well adapted for agriculture. 
The fisheries are valuable. The population 
is scanty, however. 

Anticy'clone, a phenomenon presenting 
some features opposite to those of a cyclone. 
It consists of a region of high barometric 
pressure, the pressure being greatest in the 
centre, with light winds flowing outwards 
from the centre, and not inwards as in the 
cyclone, accompanied with great cold in 
winter and with great heat in summer. 

Anticyra (an-tis'i-ra), the name of two 
towns of Greece, the one in Thessaly, the 
other in Phocis, famous for hellebore, which 
in ancient times was regarded as a specific 
against insanity and melancholy. Hence 
various jocular allusions in ancient writers. 

An'tidote, a medicine to counteract the 
effects of poison. 

Antietam (an-te'tam), a small stream in 
the United States which falls into the Po¬ 
tomac about 50 miles N.w. Washington; 
scene of an indecisive battle between the 
Federal and Confederate armies, 17th Sept. 
1862. 

Antifriction Metal, a name given to 
various alloys of tin, zinc, copper, antimony, 
lead, &c., which oppose little resistance to 
motion, with great resistance to the effects 
of friction, so far as concerns the wearing 
away of the surfaces of contact. Babbitt’s 
metal (50 parts tin, 5 antimony, 1 copper) 
is one of them. 

Antigone (an-tig'o-ne), in Greek mythol. 
the daughter of GEdipus and Jocasta, cele¬ 
brated for her devotion to her father and to 
her brother Polynices, for burying whom 
against the decree of King Creon she suf¬ 
fered death. She is heroine of Sophocles’s 
GCdipus at Colonus and his Antigone; also 
of Racine’s tragedy Les Freres Ennemis. 

Antig'onish, a town in the e. of Nova 
178 



ANTTGONUS-ANTIMONY. 


Scotia, in county of the same name; the 
seat of a R. Catholic bishop, with a cathe¬ 
dral, a college, and a good harbour. Pop. 
3500. 

Antig'onus, one of the generals of Alex¬ 
ander the Great, born about 382 B.c. After 
the death of Alexander, Antigonus obtained 
Greater Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphylia as 
his dominion. Ptolemy, Cassander, and Ly- 
simachus, alarmed by his ambition, united 
themselves against him; and a long series 
of contests ensued in Syria, Phoenicia, Asia 


Minor, and Greece, ending in 301 B.c. with 
the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, in which 
Antigonus was defeated and slain.—Antig¬ 
onus Gon'atas, son of Demetrius Polior- 
cetes, and grandson of the above, succeeded 
his father in the Kingdom of Macedon and 
all his other European dominions; died after 
a reign of forty-four years B.c. 239. 

Antigua (an-te'ga), one of the British 
West Indies, the most important of the 
Leeward group; 28 miles long, 20 broad; 
area, 108 square miles. Discovered by Co¬ 



st. John, Antigua, from the foreground of the Scotch Church. 


lumbus, 1493. Its shores are high and 
rocky; the surface is varied and fertile. 
The capital, St. John, the residence of the 
governor of the Leeward Islands, stands on 
the shore of a well-sheltered harbour in the 
north-west part of the island. The staple 
articles of export are sugar, molasses, and 
rum. Pop. (including Barbuda), 34,964. 

Anti-Jacobin, a famous magazine (1797— 
1818), the original object of which was to 
satirize the Jacobin principles of the Fox 
section of Whigs; principal contributors: 
Gifford, Canning, Frere, and Ellis. 

Anti-Lebanon, the eastern of the two 
parallel ranges known as the Mountains of 
Lebanon in Palestine. 

Antilegom'ena (things spoken against or 
objected to), a term applied by early Chris¬ 
tian writers to the Epistle of the Hebrews, 
2 Peter, James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, and 
the Apocalypse, which, though read in the 
churches, were not received into the canon 
of Scripture. 


Antilles (an-til'ez), another name for the 
West Indian Islands. 

Antimacass'ar, a covering for chairs, 
sofas, couches, &c., made of open cotton or 
worsted work, to preserve them from being 
soiled, as by the oil applied to the hair. 

Antimachus (an-tim'a-kus), a Greek poet 
who lived about 400 B.c., and wrote an epic 
called the Thebais, and a long elegy called 
Lyde, inspired by a mistress of that name; 
only fragments of his writings remain. 

An'timony (chemical sym. Sb, from L. 
stibium; sp. gr. 67, atomic wt. 122 3), a 
brittle metal of a bluish-white or silver- 
white colour and a crystalline or laminated 
structure. It melts at 842° F., and burns 
with a bluish-white flame. The mineral 
called stibnite or antimony-glance, is a tri¬ 
sulphide (SKSj), and is the chief ore from 
which the metal is obtained. It is found in 
many places, including France, Spain, Hun¬ 
gary, Italy, Canada, Australia, and Borneo. 
The metal, or, as it was formerly called, the 


179 





















ANTINOMIANISM-ANTIOCHUS. 


tegulus of antimony , does not rust or tar¬ 
nish when exposed to the air. When al¬ 
loyed with other metals it hardens them, 
and is therefore used in the manufacture of 
alloys, such as Britannia-metal, type-metal, 
and pewter. In bells it renders the sound 
more clear; it renders tin more white and 
sonorous as well as harder, and gives to print- 
ing types more firmness and smoothness. 
The salts of antimony are very poisonous. 
The protoxide is the active base of tartar 
emetic and James’s powder, and is justly 
regarded as a most valuable remedy in many 
diseases. — Yellow antimony is a preparation 
of antimony of a deep yellow colour, used in 
enamel and porcelain painting. It is of va¬ 
rious tints, and the brilliancy of the brighter 
hues is not affected by foul air. 

Antino'mianism (‘opposition to the law’), 
the name given by Luther to the inference 
drawn by John Agricola from the doctrine 
of justification by faith, that the moral law 
is not landing on Christians as a rule of 
life. The term antinomian has since been 
applied to all doctrines and practices which 
seem to contemn or discountenance strict 
moral obligations. The Lutherans and 
Calvinists have both been charged with 
antinomianism, the former on account of 
the r doctrine of justification by faith, the 
1 itter both on this ground and that of the 
doctrine of predestination. The charge is, 
of course, vigorously repelled by both. 

Antin'omy, the opposition of one law of 
rule to another law or rule; in the Kantian 
philosophy, that natural contradiction which 
results from the law of reason, when, pass¬ 
ing the limits of experience, we seek to con¬ 
ceive the complex of external phenomena, 
or nature, as a world or cosmos. 

Antinous (an-tin'o-us), a young Bithyn- 
ian whom the extravagant love of Hadrian 
has immortalized. He drowned himself in 
the Nile in 122 A.n. Hadrian set no bounds 
to his grief for his loss. He gave his name 
to a newly-discovered star, erected temples 
in his honour, called a city after him, and 
caused him to be adored as a god throughout 
the empire. Statues, busts, &c., of him are 
numerous. 

Antioch (an'ti-ok: anciently, Antiochi'a), 
a famous city of ancient times, the capital of 
the Greec kings of Syria, on the left bank 
of the Orontes, about 2 miles from the sea, 
in a beautiful and fertile plain ; founded by 
Seleucus Nicator in 300 B.C., and named 
after his father Antiochus. In Roman times 
it was the seat of the Syrian governors, and 


the centre of a widely-extended OomtnOt'ce. 
It was called the ‘ Queen of the East ’ and 
‘ The Beautiful.’ Antioch is frequently 
mentioned in the New Testament, and it 
was here that the disciples of our Saviour 
were first called Christians (Acts xi. 26). 
In the first half of the seventh century it 
was taken by the Saracens, and in 1098 by 
the Crusaders. They established the prin¬ 
cipality of Antioch, of which the first ruler 
was Bohemond, and which lasted till 1268, 
when it was taken by the Mameluke Sultan 
of Egypt. In 1516 it passed into the hands 
of the Turks. The modern Antioch, or 
Antakieh , occupies but a small portion of 
the site of the ancient Antioch. Pop. est. 
10,000.—There was another Antioch, in 
Pisidia, at which Paul preached on his first 
missionary journey. 

Antiochus (an-tl'o-kus), a name of several 
Grreco-Syrian kings of the dynasty of the 
Seleucldae. Antiochus I., called Soter (‘sa¬ 
viour’), was son of Seleucus, general of 
Alexander the Great, and founder of the 
dynasty. He was born about B.C. 324, and 
succeeded his father in B.C. 280. During 
the greater part of his reign he was engaged 
in a protracted struggle with the Gauls who 
had crossed from Europe, and by whom he 
was killed in battle B.C. 261. —Antiochus II., 
surnamed Theos (god), succeeded his father, 
lost several provinces by revolt, and was 
murdered in B.c. 246 by Laodice, his wife, 
whom he had put away to marry Berenice, 
daughter of Ptolemy.—Antiochus III., sur¬ 
named the Great, grandson of the preceding, 
was born B.c. 242, succeeded in B.c. 223. 
The early part of his reign embraced a series 
of wars against revolted provinces and neigh¬ 
bouring kingdoms, his expeditions extending 
to India, over Asia Minor, and latterly into 
Europe, where he took possession of the 
Thracian Chersonese. Here he encountered 
the Romans, who had conquered Philip V. 
of Macedon, and were prepared to resist his 
further progress. Antiochus gained an im¬ 
portant adviser in Hannibal, who had fled 
for refuge to his court; but he lost the 
opportunity of an invasion of Italy while 
the Romans w^ere engaged in war with the 
Gauls, of which the Carthaginian urged him 
to avail himself. The Romans defeated 
him by sea and land, and he was finally 
overthrown by Scipio at Mount Sipylus, in 
Asia Minor, B.c. 190, and very severe terms 
were imposed upon him. He was killed 
while plundering a temple in Elymais to 
procure money to pay the Romans.— Anti- 

180 



ANTIOQUIA 


ANTI POPE. 


ochus IV., called Epiphdnes, youngest son 
of the above, is chiefly remarkable for his 
attempt to extirpate the Jewish religion, 
and to establish in its place the polytheism 
of the Greeks. This led to the insurrection 
of the Maccabees, by which the Jews ulti¬ 
mately recovered their independence. He 
died b.c. 164. 

Antioquia (an-te-o-ke'a), a town of South 
America, in Colombia, on the river Cauca; 
founded in 1542. Pop. 10,000. It gives 
* name to a department of the republic; area, 


22,316 sq. miles; pop. 365,974. Capital, 
Medellin. 

Antipsedobaptist, one who is opposed to 
the doctrine of infant baptism. 

Antip'aros (anc. Oliaros ), one of the 
Cyclades Islands in the Grecian Archi¬ 
pelago, containing a famous stalactitic grotto 
or cave. It lies south-west of Paros, from 
which it is separated by a narrow strait, 
and has an area of 10 square miles, and 
about 500 inhabitants. 

Antip'ater, a general and friend of Philip 



Medal of Antiochus Epiphanes. 


of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. 
On the death of Alexander, in 323 B c., 
the regency of Macedonia was assigned 
to Antipater, who succeeded in establishing 
the Macedonian rule in Greece on a firm 
footing. He died in B.c. 317 at an advanced 
age. 

Antip'athy, a special dislike exhibited by 
individuals to particular objects or persons, 
usually resulting from physical or nervous 
organization. An antipathy is often an 
unaccountable repugnance to what people 
in general regard with no particular dislike, 
as certain sounds, smells, articles of food, 
&c., and it may be manifested by fainting 
or extreme discomfort. 

Antiphlogistic, a term applied to medi¬ 
cines or methods of treatment that are in¬ 
tended to counteract inflammation, such as 
bloodletting, purgatives, diaphoretics, &c. 

Antiphon, a Greek orator, born near 
Athens; founder of political oratory in 
Greece. His orations are the oldest extant, 
and he is said to have been the first who 
wrote speeches for hire. He was put to 
death for taking part in the revolution of 
B.C. 411, which established the oligarchic 
government of the Four Hundred. 

Antiphon, Antiph'ony (‘alternate song ’), 
in the Christian church a verse first sung 
by a single voice, and then repeated by the 

181 


whole choir; or any piece to be sung by 
alternate voices. 

Antipodes (an-tip'o-dez), the name given 
relatively to people or places on opposite 
sides of the earth, so situated that a line 
drawn from one to the other passes through 
the centre of the earth and forms a true 
diameter. The longitudes of two such places 
differ by 180°. r l he difference in their time 
is about twelve hours, and their seasons are 
reversed. 

Antipodes Islands, a group of small un¬ 
inhabited islands in the South Pacific Ocean, 
about 460 miles s.R. by E. of New yealand; 
so called from being nearly antipodal to 
Greenwich. Antipodes Island rises to 1300 
feet, and is largely covered with coarse 
grass; huts have recently been fitted up to 
shelter castaways. 

An'tipope, the name applied to those who 
at different periods have produced a schism 
in the Roman Catholic Church by opposing 
the authority of the pope, under the pre¬ 
tence that they were themselves popes. 
The Roman Church cannot admit that 
there ever existed two popes; but the fact 
is, that in several cases both competitors 
for the papal chair (sometimes there were 
three or even fourf were equal y popes; 
that is to sav, the claims of all were equally 
good, Each was frequently supported by 






ANTIQUARIES-ANTITRINITARIANS. 


whole nations, and the schism was nothing 
but the struggle of political interests, which 
induced particular go\ernments to support 
a pope against the pope supported by other 
governments. The greatest schism of this 
kind lasted for fifty years—1378-1429. 

An'tiquaries, those devoted to the study 
of ancient times through their relics, as 
old places of sepulchre, remains of ancient 
habitations, early monuments, implements 
or weapons, statues, coins, medals, paint¬ 
ings, inscriptions, books, and manuscripts, 
with the view of arriving at a knowledge of 
the relations, modes of living, habits, and 
general condition of the people who created 
or employed them. Societies or associations 
of antiquaries have been formed in all 
countries of European civilization. In 
Britain the Society of Antiquaries of Lon¬ 
don was founded in 1572, revived in 1717, 
and incorporated in 1751. The Society of 
Antiquaries of Scotland was founded in 
1780, incorporated in 1783, and has the 
management of a large national antiquarian 
museum in Edinburgh. 

Antiques (an-te^s'), a term specifically 
applied to the remains of ancient art, as 
statues, paintings, vases, cameos, and the 
like, and more especially to the works of 
Grecian and Roman antiquity. 

Antirrhinum (an-ti-rt'num), a genus of 
annual or perennial plants of the natural 
order Scrophulariaceae, commonly known 
as snapdragon , on account of the peculiarity 
of the blossoms, which, by pressing between 
the finger and thumb, may be made to open 
and shut like a mouth. They all produce 
showy flowers, and are much cultivated in 
gardens. Many varieties of some of them, 
such as the great or common snapdragon 
(Antirrhinum majus), have been produced 
by gardeners. 

Antisana (an-te sa'na), a volcano in the 
Andes of Ecuador, 35 miles s.E. by E. 
Quito. Whymper, who ascended it in 1880, 
makes its height 19,260 feet. 

Antis'cians (Gr. anti, over against, sTcia, 
a shadow), those who live under the same 
meridian, at the same distance N. and s. 
of the equator, and whose shadows at noon 
consequently are thrown in contrary direc¬ 
tions. 

Antiscorbutics, remedies against scurvy. 
Lemon-juice, ripe fruit, milk, salts of potash, 
green vegetables, potatoes, fresh meat, and 
raw or lightly boiled eggs, are some of the 
principal antiscorbutics. See Scurvy. 
Antiseptic (Gr. anti , against, and sepein , 


to rot), an agent by which the putrefaction 
of vegetable or animal matters is prevented 
or arrested. There are a great number of 
substances having this preservative pro¬ 
perty, among which are salt, alcohol, vege¬ 
table charcoal, creosote, corrosive sublimate, 
tannic acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuric ether, 
chloroform, arsenic, wood-spirit, aloes, cam¬ 
phor, benzine, aniline, &c. The packing of 
fish in ice, and the curing of herring and 
other fish with salt, are familiar antiseptic 
processes. The different antiseptics act in 
different ways. The term is applied in a 
specific manner to that mode of treatment 
in surgery by which air is excluded from 
wounds, or allowed access only through 
substances capable of destroying the germs 
in the atmosphere, on whose presence sup¬ 
puration is assumed to depend. 

Antispasmod'ic, a medicine proper for 
the cure of spasms and convulsions; such 
belong largely to the class of ethers, as sul¬ 
phuric ether, chloric ether, nitric ether, &c. 

Antisthenes (an-tis'the-nez), a Greek 
philosopher and the founder of the school 
of Cynics, born at Athens about B.c. 444. 
He was first a disciple of Gorgias and then 
of Socrates, at whose death he was present. 
His philosophy was a one-sided develop¬ 
ment of the Socratic teaching. He held 
virtue to consist in complete self-denial and 
in disregard of riches, honour, or pleasure 
of every kind. He himself lived as a beg¬ 
gar. He died in Athens at an advanced 
age. 

Antis'trophe. See Strophe. 

Antitaurus. See Taurus. 

Antithesis (opposition), a figure of speech 
consisting in a contrast or opposition of 
words or sentiments; as, ‘When our vices 
Leave us, we flatter ourselves we leave them;' 

‘ The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs 
himself.' 

Anti-trade, a name given to any of the 
upper tropical winds which move northward 
or southward in the same manner as the 
trade-winds which blow beneath them in 
the opposite direction. These great aerial 
currents descend to the surface after they 
have passed the limits of the trade-winds, 
and form the south-west or west south-west 
winds of the north temperate, and the north¬ 
west or west-north-west winds of the south 
temperate zones. 

Antitrinita'rians, all who do not receive 
the doctrine of the divine Trinity, or the 
existence of three persons in the Godhead; 
especially applied to those who oppose such 



ANTITYPE-ANTOINETTE. 


a doctrine on philosophical grounds, as con¬ 
trasted with Unitarians, who reject the doc¬ 
trine as not warranted by Scripture. 

An'titype, that which is correlative to a 
type; by theological writers the term is 
employed to denote the reality of which a 
type is the prophetic symbol. 

An'tium, in ancient Italy, one of the 
most ancient and powerful cities of Latium, 
the chief city of the Volsci, and often at 
war with the Romans, by whom it was 
finally taken in 338 b.c. It was 38 miles 
distant from Rome, a flourishing seaport, 
and became a favourite residence of the 
wealthy Romans. It was destroyed by the 
Saracens; but vestiges of it remain at Porto 
d’Anzo, near which many valuable works 
of art have been found. 

Antivari (an-te'va-re), a seaport town on 
the eastern shore of the Adriatic, ceded to 
Montenegro by the Treaty of Berlin (1878). 
Pop. about 6000. 

Antlers, the horns of the deer tribe, or 
the snags or branches of the horns. See 
Deer. 

Ant-lion, the larva of a Neuropterous 
insect (Myrmcleon formicarius), which in 
its perfect state greatly resembles a dragon¬ 
fly; curious on account of its ingenious 
method of catching the insects—^chiefly 
ants—on which it feeds. It digs a funnel- 
shaped hole in the driest and finest sand it 
can find, and when the pit is deep enough, 



Perfect Insect (MyrmeWon formic&rius) and Larva 
(ant-lion). 

and the sides are quite smooth and sloping, 
it buries itself at the bottom with only its 
formidable mandibles projecting, and waits 
till some luckless insect stumbles over the 
edge, when it is immediately seized, its 
juices sucked, and the dead body jerked 
from the hole. 

Antofagas'ta, a Chilian seaport on the 
Bay of Morena, and a territory of the same 
name recently taken from Bolivia. The 

183 


territory has an area of 60,988 sq. miles, 
and a population of 21,213. The port is 
connected by railway with the silver mines 
of Caracoles, and exports silver, copper, 
cubic nitre, &c. Pop. 7946. 

Antoinette (an-twa-net), Makie (Marie 
Antoinette Joseph Jeanne de Lorraine), 



Marie Antoinette. 


Archduchess of Austria and Queen of 
France, the youngest daughter of the Em¬ 
peror Francis I. and of Maria Theresa, was 
born at Vienna, 2d November, 1755; exe¬ 
cuted at Paris, 16th Oct. 1793. She was 
married at the age of fifteen to the Dauphin, 
afterwards Louis XVI., but her manners 
were ill-suited to the French court, and she 
made many enemies among the highest fa¬ 
milies by her contempt for its ceremonies, 
which excited her ridicule. The freedom of 
her manners, indeed, even after she became 
queen, was a cause of scandal. The extra¬ 
ordinary affair of the diamond necklace, 
in which the Cardinal Louis de Rohan, the 
great quack Cagliostro, and a certain Count¬ 
ess de Lamotte were the chief actors, tar¬ 
nished her name, and added force to the 
calumnies against her. Though it was 
proved in the examination which she de¬ 
manded that she had never ordered the 
necklace, her enemies succeeded in casting 
a stigma on her, and the credtdous people 
laid every public disaster to her charge. 
There is no doubt she had great influence 
over the king, and that she constantly 
opposed all measures of reform. The eu« 











ANTOMMARCHI — 

thusiastic reception given her at the guards’ 
ball at Versailles on 1st October, 1789, 
raised the general indignation to the high¬ 
est pitch, and was followed in a few days 
by the insurrection of women, and the 
attack on Versailles. When practically 
prisoners in the Tuileries it was she who 
advised the flight of the royal family in 
June, 1791, which ended in their capture 
and return. On 10th August, 1792, she 
heard her husband’s deposition pronounced 
by the Legislative Assembly, and accompa¬ 
nied him to the prison in the Temple, where 
she displayed the magnanimity of a heroine 
and the patient endurance of a martyr. In 
January, 1793, she parted with her husband 
who had been condemned by the Convention; 
in August she was removed to the Concier- 
gerie; and in October she was charged be¬ 
fore the revolutionary tribunal with having 
dissipated the finances, exhausted the trea¬ 
sury, corresponded with the foreign enemies 
of France, and favoured the domestic foes 
of the country. She defended herself with 
firmness, decision, and indignation; and 
heard the sentence of death pronounced with 
perfect calmness—a calmness which did not 
forsake her when the sentence was carried 
out the following morning. Her son, eight 
years of age, died shortly afterwards, as 
was generally believed by poison, and her 
daughter was suffered to quit France, and 
afterwards married her cousin the Duke of 
Angouleme. 

Antommarchi (-mar'ke), Carlo Fran¬ 
cesco, Italian physician, born in Corsica in 
1780, died in Cuba 1838. He was professor 
of anatomy at Florence when he offered him¬ 
self as physician of Napoleon at St. Helena. 
Napoleon at first received him with reserve, 
but soon admitted him to his confidence 
and testified his satisfaction with him by 
leaving him a legacy of 100,000 francs. On 
his return to Europe he published the Der- 
niers Moments de Napoleon (two vols. 8vo, 
1823). 

Antonell'i, Giacomo, cardinal, born 1806, 
died 1876. He was educated at the Grand 
Seminary of Rome, where he attracted the 
attention of Pope Gregory XVI., who ap¬ 
pointed him to several important offices. 
On the accession of Pius IX. in 1846 An- 
tonelli was raised to the dignity of cardinal- 
deacon ; two years later he became president 
and minister of foreign affairs, and in 1850 
was appointed secretary of state. During 
the sitting of the (Ecumenical Council 
(1869-7 0) be was a prominent champion of 


ANTONINUS PIUS. 

the papal interest. He strongly opposed 
the assumption of the united Italian crown 
by Victor Emanuel. 

Antonell'o (of Messina!, an Italian pain¬ 
ter who died in the end of the sixteenth 
century, and is said to have introduced oil- 
painting into Italy (at Venice), having been 
instructed in it by John Van Eyck. 

Antoni'nus, Itinerary of. See Itinerary . 

Antoni'nus, Marcus Aurelius. See 
A urelius. 

Antoni'nus, Wall of, a barrier erected 
by the Romans across the isthmus between 
the Forth and the Clyde, in the reign of 
Antoninus Pius. Its western extremity 
was at or near Dunglass Castle, its eastern 
at Carridon, and the whole length of it ex¬ 
ceeded 27 miles. It was constructed a.d. 
140 by Lollius Urbicus, the imperial legate, 
and consisted of a ditch 40 feet wide and 
20 feet deep, and a rampart of stone and 
earth on the south side 24 feet thick and 
20 feet in height. It was strengthened at 
each end and along its course by a series of 
forts and watch-towers. It may still be 
traced at various points, and is commonly 
known as Graham's Dyke. 

Antoni'nus Pius, Titus Aurelius Ful- 
vus, Roman emperor, was born at Lavinium, 
near Rome, a.d. 86, died a.d. 161. In A.D. 
120 he became consul, and he was one of 
the four per¬ 
sons of consular 
rank among 
whom Hadrian 
divided the su¬ 
preme adminis¬ 
tration of Italy. 

He then went 
as proconsul to 
Asia, and after 
his return to 
Rome became 
more and more 
the object of Coin of Antoninus Pius. 
Hadrian’s con¬ 
fidence. In a.d. 138 he was selected by 
that emperor as his successor, and the 
same year he ascended the throne. The 
persecutions of the Christians he speed¬ 
ily abolished. He carried on but a few 
wars. In Britain he extended the Roman 
dominion, and by raising a new wall (see 
preceding art.) put a stop to the invasions 
of the Piets and Scots. The senate gave 
him the surname Pius, that is, dutiful or 
showing filial affection, because to keep 
alive the memory of Hadrian be had builtj 

m 







ANTONIUS - 

a temple in. his honour. He was succeeded 
by Marcus Aurelius, his adopted son. 

Anto'nius, Marcus (Mark Antony), Ro¬ 
man triumvir, born 83 B.C., was connected 
with the family of Caesar by his mother. De¬ 
bauchery and prodigality marked his youth. 
To escape his creditors he went to Greece 
in 58, and from thence followed the consul 
Gabinius on a campaign in Syria as com¬ 
mander of the cavalry. He served in Gaul 
under Caesar in 52 and 51. In 50 he re¬ 
turned to Rome to support the interests 
of Caesar against the aristocratical party 
headed by Pompey, and was appointed 
tribune. When war broke out between 
Caesar and Pompey, Antony led reinforce¬ 
ments to Caesar in Greece, and in the battle 
of Pharsalia he commanded the left wing. 
He afterwards returned to Rome with the 
appointment of master of the horse and 
governor of Italy (47). In b.c. 44 he be¬ 
came Caesar’s colleague in the consulship. 
Soon after Caesar was assassinated, and An¬ 
tony would have shared the same fate had 
not Brutus stood up in his behalf. Antony, 
by the reading of Caesar’s will, and by the 
oration which he delivered over his body, 
excited the people to anger and revenge, 
and the murderers were obliged to flee. 
After several quarrels and reconciliations 
with Octavianus, Caesar’s heir (see A uy ustus), 
Antony departed to Cisalpine Gaul, which 
province had been conferred upon him 
against the will of the senate. But Cicero 
thundered against him in his famous Phi¬ 
lippics; the senate declared him a public 
enemy, and intrusted the conduct of the 
war against him to Octavianus and the con¬ 
suls Hirtius and Pansa. After a campaign 
of varied fortunes Antony fled with his 
troops over the Alps. Here he was joined 
by Lepidus, who commanded in Gaul, and 
through whose mediation Antony and Oc¬ 
tavianus were again reconciled. It was 
agreed that the Roman world should be 
divided among the three conspirators, who 
were called triumvirs. Antony was to 
take Gaul; Lepidus, Spain; and Octavianus, 
Africa and Sicily. They decided upon the 
proscription of their mutual enemies, each 
giving up his friends to the others, the most 
celebrated of the victims being Cicero the 
orator. Antony and Octavianus departed 
in 42 for Macedonia, where the united 
forces of their enemies, Brutus and Cassius, 
formed a powerful army, which was, how¬ 
ever, speedily defeated at Philippi. Antony 
pext visited Athens, and thence proceeded 


— ANTRIM. 

to Asia. In Cilicia he ordered Cleopatra, 
queen of Egypt, to apologize for her inso¬ 
lent behaviour to the triumviri. She ap¬ 
peared in person, and her charms fettered 
him for ever. He followed her to Alexan¬ 
dria, where he bestowed not even a thought 
upon the affairs of the world, till he was 
aroused by a report that hostilities had 
commenced in Italy between his own rela¬ 
tives and Octavianus. A short war fol¬ 
lowed, which was decided in favour of 
Octavianus before the arrival of Antony in 
Italy. A reconciliation was effected, which 
was sealed by the marriage of Antony with 
Octavia, the sister of Octavianus. A new 
division of the Roman dominions was now 
made (in 40), by which Antony obtained 
the East, Octavianus the West. After his 
return to Asia Antony gave himself up 
entirely to Cleopatra, assuming the style of 
an eastern despot, and so alienating many 
of his adherents and embittering public 
opinion against him at Rome. At length 
war was declared at Rome against the 
Queen of Egypt, and Antony was deprived 
of his consulship and government. Each 
party assembled its forces, and Antony lost, 
in the naval battle at Actium (b.c. 31), the 
dominion of the world. He followed Cleo¬ 
patra to Alexandria, and on the arrival of 
Octavianus his fleet and cavalry deserted, 
and his infantry was defeated. Deceived 
by a false report which Cleopatra had dis¬ 
seminated of her death, he fell upon his own 
sword (b.c. 30). 

Antonoma'sia, in rhetoric, the use of the 
name of some office, dignity, profession, sci¬ 
ence, or trade instead of the true name of 
the person, as when his majesty is used for 
a king, his lordship for a nobleman; or 
when, instead of Aristotle, we say, the phi¬ 
losopher; or, conversely, the .use of a proper 
noun instead of a common noun; as, a Solo¬ 
mon for a wise man. 

Antony, Mark. See Antonins (Marcus). 

Antony, St. See Anthony. 

An'trim, a county of Ireland, province of 
Ulster, in the north-east of the island; 
area, 762,080 acres, of which about a third 
are arable. 'J he eastern and northern dis¬ 
tricts are comparatively mountainous, with 
tracts of heath and bog, but no part rises to 
a great height. The principal rivers are the 
Lagan and the Bann, which separate Antrim 
from Down and Londonderry respectively. 
The general soil of the plains and valleys is 
strong loam. Flax, oats, and potatoes are 
the principal agricultural produce, Cattle, 



ANT-THRUSH 


ANUBIS. 


sheep, swine, and goats are extensively 
reared. There are salt-mines and beds of 
iron-ore, which is worked and exported. A 
range of basaltic strata stretches along the 
northern coast, of which the celebrated 
Giant’s Causeway is the most remarkable 
portion. The spinning of linen and cotton 
yarn, and the weaving of linen and cotton, 
are the staple manufactures. The principal 
towns are Bel¬ 
fast, Ballyme¬ 
na, and Larne. 

Many of the in¬ 
habitants are 
Presbyterians, 
being the de¬ 
scendants of 
Scottish im¬ 
migrants of 
the seventeenth 
century. The 
county sends 
four members 
to parliament. 

Pop. 427,968.— 

The town of 
Antrim, at the 
north end of 
Lough Neagh, 
is a small place 
with a pop. of 
2020. 

Ant-thrush, 

a name given to 
certain passer¬ 
ine or perching 
birds having re¬ 
semblances to 
the thrushes 
and supposed to 
feed largely on 

ants. They all have longish legs and a short 
tail. The ant-thrushes of the Old World 
belong to the genus Pitta. They inhabit 
southern and south-eastern Asia and the 
Eastern Archipelago, and are birds of bril¬ 
liant plumage. The New World ant-thrushes 
belong to South America, and live among 
close foliage and bushes. Some of them are 
called ant shrikes and ant-wrens. They 
belong to several genera. 

Ant'werp (Dutch and Ger. Antwerpen, 
French, Anvers ), the chief port of Belgium, 
and the capital of a province of the same 
name, on the Scheldt, about 50 miles from 
the open sea. It is strongly fortified, being 
completely surrounded on the land side by 
a semicircular ipner ling of foUifigatioos, 



Antwerp Cathedral, from the Egg Market. 


the defences being completed by an outer 
line of forts and outworks. The cathedral, 
with a spire 400 feet high, one of the largest 
and most beautiful specimens of Gothic 
architecture in Belgium, contains Rubens’s 
celebrated masterpieces, the Descent from 
the Cross, the Elevation of the Cross, and 
The Assumption. The other churches of 
note are St. James’s, St. Andrew’s, and St. 

Paul’s, all en¬ 
riched with 
paintings by 
Rubens, Van- 
dyck, and other 
masters.Among 
the other edi¬ 
fices of note are 
the exchange, 
the town-hall, 
the palace, the¬ 
atre, academy 
of the fine arts, 
picture and 

sculpture gal¬ 
leries, &c. The 
harbour accom¬ 
modation is ex¬ 
tensive and ex¬ 
cellent, new 

docks and quays 
having been 
built in the past 
few years. The 
shipping trade 
has greatly ad¬ 
vanced in re¬ 
cent times, and 
is now very 
large, the goods 
being largely in 
transit. There 
are numerous and varied industries. Ant¬ 
werp is mentioned as early as the eighth 
century, and in the eleventh and twelfth 
it had attained a high degree of prosperity. 
In the sixteenth century it is said to have 
had a pop. of 200,000. The wars between 
the Netherlands and Spain greatly injured 
its commerce, which was almost ruined by 
the closing of the navigation of the Scheldt 
in accordance with the peace of Westphalia 
(1648). It is only in the present century 
that its prosperity has revived Pop. 215,779. 
—The province consists of a fertile plain 
1100 square miles in area, and has a popu¬ 
lation of 652,061. 

Anu'bis (Anepo on the monuments), one 
of the deities of the ancient Egyptians, the 

‘' m 































































ANUPSHAHR-APARTMENT HOUSES. 



son of Osiris by Isis. The Egyptian sculp¬ 
tures represent him with the head, or under 
the form, of a jackal, with long pointed 
ears. His office was to conduct the souls of 
the dead from this 
world to the next, // 

and in the lower . 

world he weighed 
the actions of the 
deceased previous 
to their admission 
to the presence of 
Osiris. 

Anupshahr (a- 

nbp'shar), a town 
of Hindustan, N. 

W. Provinces, on 
the Ganges, 75 
miles s.E. of Delhi, 
a resort of Hindu 
pilgrims who bathe 
in the Ganges. 

Pop. 8234. 

Anu'ra, or An- 
Ou'ra (Gr. a, nega- Auubis. 

tive, oura, a tail), 

an order of Batrachians which lose the tail 
when they reach maturity, such as the frogs 
and toads. 

Anuradhapura. See Anarajapura. 

A'nus, the opening at the lower or pos¬ 
terior extremity of the alimentary canal 
through which the excrement or waste pro¬ 
ducts of digestion are expelled. 

An'vil, an instrument on which pieces of 
metal are laid for the purpose of being 
hammered. The common smith’s anvil is 
generally made of seven pieces, namely, the 
core or body; the four corners for the pur¬ 
pose of enlarging its base; the projecting 
end, which contains a square hole for the 
reception of a set or chisel to cut otf pieces 
of iron; and the beak or conical end, used 
for turning pieces of iron into a circular 
form, &c. These pieces are each separately 
welded to the core and hammered so as to 
form a regular surface with the whole. 
When the anvil has received its due form, 
it is faced with steel, and is then tempered 
in cold water. The smith’s anvil is gener¬ 
ally placed loose upon a wooden block. The 
anvil for heavy operations, such as the forg¬ 
ing of ordnance and shafting, consists of a 
huge iron block deeply embedded, and rest¬ 
ing on piles of masonry. 

Anville, Jfan Baptiste Bourguignon 
d’ (jan bap test bbr-ge-nyon dan-vel), a 
G§l§br^ted French geographer, born 1697, 

}87 


died 1782; published a great number of 
maps and writings illustrative of ancient 
and modern geography. 

Anzin (an-zan), a town of France, de¬ 
partment of Nord, about 1 mile north-west 
from Valenciennes, in the centre of an ex¬ 
tensive coal-field, with blast-furnaces, forges, 
rolling-mills, foundries, &c. Pop. 10,043. 

Aonia, in ancient geography a name for 
part of Boeotia in Greece, containing Mount 
Helicon and the fountain Aganippe, both 
haunts of the muses. 

A'orist, the name given to one of the 
tenses of the verb in some languages (as the 
Greek), which expresses indefinite past time. 

Aor'ta, in anatomy, the great artery or 
trunk of the arterial system, proceeding 
from the left ventricle of the heart, and 
giving origin to all the arteries except the 
pulmonary. It first rises towards the top 
of the breast-bone, when it is called the 
ascending aorta; then makes a great curve, 
called the transverse or great arch of the 
aorta, whence it gives off branches to the 
head and upper extremities; thence pro¬ 
ceeding towards the lower extremities, under 
the name of the descending aorta, it gives 
off branches to the trunk; and finally divides 
into the two iliacs, which supply the pelvis 
and lower extremities. 

Aosta (a-os'ta; anc. Augusta Pretoria), 
a town of north Italy, 50 miles N.N.w. of 
Turin, on the Dora-Baltea, with an ancient 
triumphal arch, remains of an amphitheatre, 
&c. Pop. 7830. 

Aoudad (a-o'dad), the Ammotrdgus tra- 
geldphus , a quadruped allied to the sheep, 
most closely to the moufion, from which, 
however, it may be easily distinguished by 
the heavy mane, commencing at the throat 
and falling as far as the knees. It is a 
native of North Africa, inhabiting the lofti¬ 
est and most inaccessible precipices. 

Apaches (a-pa'chez), a warlike race of 
Indians inhabiting the more unsettled parts 
of the United States adjoining Mexico, and 
also the north of Mexico. r I hey live chiefly 
on horseback, support themselves by the 
chase and plunder, and they still maintain 
their independence and hostility to the 
whites. 

Ap'anage, an allowance which the younger 
princes of a reigning house in some Euro¬ 
pean countries receive from the revenues of 
the country, generally together with a grant 
of public domains, that they may be enabled 
to live in a manner becoming their rank. 

Apartment houses, bouses built toaccoim 











APATITE-APERIENT. 


modate a number of families each in its own 
set of rooms, which form a separate dwelling 
with an entrance of its own. The term is 
chiefly used in America, where such dwell¬ 
ings are of comparatively recent introduc¬ 
tion; but houses of this kind have long been 
built in Europe, though in Loudon, as in the 
United States, they are still somewhat of a 
novelty. In New York and other American 
cities there are now great blocks of such 
houses, which provide excellent and com¬ 
modious dwellings at a lower rent than if 
each were a separate building. 

Ap'atite, a translucent but seldom trans¬ 
parent mineral, which crystallizes in a regu¬ 
lar six-sided prism, usually terminated by 
a truncated six-sided pyramid. It passes 
through various shades of colour, from white 
to yellow, green, blue, and occasionally red, 
scratches fluor-spar but is scratched by fel¬ 
spar, and has a specific gravity of about 
3*5. It is a compound of phosphate of lime 
with fluoride and chloride of calcium. It 
occurs principally in primitive rocks and 
in veins, extensive deposits being found in 
all parts of the world. It is now largely 
utilized as a source of artificial phosphate 
manures. 

Ape, a common name of a number of 
quadrumanous animals inhabiting the Old 
World (Asia and the Asiatic islands, and 
Africa), and including a variety of species. 
The word ape was formerly applied indis¬ 
criminately to all quadrumanous mammals; 
but it is now limited to the anthropoid or 
man-like monkeys. The family includes 
the chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-outang, &c., 
and has been divided into three genera, 
Troglodytes, Simla, and Ilylobdtes. See 
Chimpanzee, Gibbon, Gorilla, Orang, &c. 

Apeldoorn (a'pel-dorn), a town of Hol¬ 
land, province of Guelderland, 17 miles 
north of Arnhem; manufactures paper, 
morocco leather, and copper-plates. Pop. 
12,411. 

Apelles (a-pel'ez), the most famous of the 
painters of ancient Greece and of antiquity, 
was born in the fourth century B.C., probably 
at Colophon. Ephorus of Ephesus was his 
first teacher, but attracted by the renown of 
the Sicyonian school he went and studied 
at Sicyon. In the time of Philip he went 
to Macedonia, and there a close friendship 
between him and Alexander the Great was 
established. The most admired of his pic¬ 
tures was that of Venus rising from the sea 
and wringing the water from her dripping 
Jocks, Ilis portrait of Alexander with a 


thunderbolt in his hand was no less cele¬ 
brated. His renown was at its height about 
B.C. 330, and he died about the end of the 
century. Among the anecdotes told of 
Apelles is the one which gave rise to the 
Latin proverb, ‘Ne sutor supra crepidam’ 
—‘ Let not the shoemaker go beyond his 
shoe.’ Having heard a cobbler point out 
an error in the drawing of a shoe in one of 
his pictures he corrected it, whereupon the 
cobbler took upon him to criticise the leg, 
and received from the artist the famous 
reply. 

Apennines (Latin, Mons Apenninus), a 
prolongation of the Alps, forming the ‘ back¬ 
bone of Italy.’ Beginning at Savona, on 
the Gulf of Genoa, the Apennines traverse 
the whole of the peninsula and also cross 
over into Sicily, the Strait of Messina being 
regarded merely as a gap in the chain. 
The average height of the mountains com¬ 
posing the range is about 4000 feet, and 
nowhere do they reach the limits of per¬ 
petual snow, though some summits exceed 
9000 feet in height. Monte Corno, called 
also Gran Sasso d’ltalia (Great Rock of 
Italy), which rises among the mountains 
of the Abruzzi, is the loftiest of the chain, 
rising to the height of 9541 feet, Monte 
Majella (9151) being next. Monte Gar- 
gano, which juts out into the Adriatic from 
the ankle of Italy, is a mountainous mass 
upwards of 5000 feet high, completely sepa¬ 
rated from the main chain. On the Adri¬ 
atic side the mountains descend more 
abruptly to the sea than on the western or 
Mediterranean side, and the streams are 
comparatively short and rapid. On the 
western side are the valleys of the Arno, 
Tiber, Garigliano, and Volturno, the largest 
rivers that rise in the Apennines, and the 
only ones of importance in the peninsular 
portion of Italy. They consist almost en¬ 
tirely of limestone rocks, and are exceed¬ 
ingly rich in the finest marbles. On the 
south slopes volcanic masses are not uncom¬ 
mon. Mount Vesuvius, the only active 
volcano on the continent of Europe, is an 
instance. The lower slopes are well clothed 
with vegetation, the summits are sterile and 
bare. 

Apenrade (a'pen-ra-de), a seaport of 
Prussia, in Schleswig-Holstein, on a fiord 
of the Little Belt, beautifully situated, and 
carrying on a considerable fishing and sea¬ 
faring trade. Pop. 6212. 

Ape'rient, a medicine which, in moderate 
doses, gently but completely opens the 

m 


APETALOUS 

♦ 

bowels: examples, castor-oil, Epsom salts, 
senna, &c. 

Apet'alous, a botanical term applied to 
flowers or flowering-plants which are desti¬ 
tute of petals or corolla. 

Aphaniptera, an order of wingless in¬ 
sects, composed of the different species of 
fleas. See Flea. 

Aphasia (Gr. a, not, and phasis, speak¬ 
ing), in pathology, a symptom of certain 
morbid conditions of the nervous system, 
in which the patient loses the power of ex¬ 
pressing ideas by means of words, or loses 
the appropriate use of words, the vocal 
organs the while remaining intact and the 
intelligence sound. There is sometimes an 
entire loss of words as connected with ideas, 
and sometimes only the loss of a few. In 
one form of the disease, called aphemia, the 
patient can think and write, but cannot 
speak; in another, called agraphia, he can 
think and speak, but cannot express his 
ideas in writing. In a great majority of 
cases, where post-mortem examinations have 
been made, morbid changes have been found 
in the left frontal convolution of the brain. 

Aphelion (Gr. apo , from, and helios, the 
sun), that part of the orbit of the earth or 
any other planet in which it is at the point 
remotest from the sun. 

Aphe'mia. See Aphasia. 

Aphides (af'i-dez). See Aphis. 

Aphis, a genus of insects (called plant- 
lice) of the order Hemiptera, the type of 
the family Aphides. The species are very 



Wheat Plant-louse (Aphis granaria).— 1, 2, Male, 
enlarged and natural size. 3, 4, Wingless Female, 
enlarged and natural size. 

numerous and destructive. The A. rosce 
lives on the rose; the A. fabce on the bean; 
the A. humhli is injurious to the hop, the 
A. granaria to cereals, the A. lanigSra 
or woolly aphis equally so to apple-trees. 
The aphides are furnished with an in¬ 
flected beak, and feelers longer than the 
thorax. In the same species some indi¬ 
viduals have four erect wings and others 

189 


APIA. 

are entirely without wings. The feet are 
of the ambulatory kind, and the abdomen 
usually ends in two horn-like tubes, from 
which is ejected the substance called honey- 
dew, a favourite food of ants. (See Ant.) 
The aphides illustrate parthenogenesis; 
hermaphrodite forms produced from eggs 
produce viviparous wingless forms, which 
again produce others like themselves, and 
thus multiply during summer, one indi¬ 
vidual giving rise to millions. Winged 
sexual forms appear late in autumn, the 
females of which, being impregnated by 
the males, produce eggs. 

Apho'nia (Gr. a, not, and phone, voice), 
in pathology, the greater or less impairment, 
or the complete loss of the power of emitting 
vocal sound. The slightest and less perma¬ 
nent forms often arise from extreme ner¬ 
vousness, fright, and hysteria. Slight forms 
of structural aphonia are of a catarrhal nature, 
resulting from more or less congestion and 
tumefaction of the mucous and submucous 
tissues of the larynx and adjoining parts. 
Severer cases are frequently occasioned by 
serous infiltration into the submucous tissue, 
with or without inflammation of the mucous 
membrane of the larynx and of its vicinity. 
The voice may also be affected in different 
degrees by inflammatory affections of the 
fauces and tonsils; by tumours in these situa¬ 
tions; by morbid growths pressing on or im¬ 
plicating the larynx or trachea; by aneur¬ 
isms; and most frequently by chronic laryn¬ 
gitis and its consequences, especially thicken¬ 
ing, ulceration, &c. 

Aphorism, a brief, sententious saying, in 
which a comprehensive meaning is involved, 
as ‘Familiarity breeds contempt;’ ‘Neces¬ 
sity has no law.’ 

Aphrodisiacs, medicines or food believed 
to be capable of exciting sexual desire. 

Aphrodite (af-ro-dl'te), the goddess of 
love among the Greeks; usually regarded 
as equivalent to the Roman Venus. A 
festival called Aphrodisia was celebrated to 
her in various parts of Greece, but especially 
in Cyprus. See Venus. 

Aphthae (af'the), a disease occurring espe¬ 
cially in infants, but occasionally seen in old 
persons, and consisting of small white ulcers 
upon the tongue, gums, inside of the lips, 
and palate, resembling particles of curdled 
milk: commonly called thrush or milk- 
thrush. 

A'pia, the chief place and trading centre 
of the Samoa Islands, on the north side of 
the island of Upolu. 





APIARY-APLANATjC. 


A'piary (L.apis, a bee), a place for keeping 
bees. The apiary should be well sheltered 
from strong winds, moisture, and theextremes 
of heat and cold. The hives should face the 
south or south-east, and should be placed on 
shelves 2 feet above the ground, and about 
the same distance from each other. As to 
the form of the hives and the materials of 
which they should be constructed there are 
great differences of opinion. The old dome¬ 
shaped straw sleep is still in general use among 
the cottagers of Great Britain. Its cheap¬ 
ness and simplicity of construction are in its 
favour, while it is excellent for warmth and 
ventilation; but it has the disadvantage that 
its interior is closed to inspection, and the 
honey can only be got out by stupefying the 
bees with the smoke of the common puff¬ 
ball or chloroform, or by fumigating with 
sulphur, which entails the destruction of the 
swarm. Wooden hives of square box-like 
form are now gaining general favour among 
bee-keepers. They usually consist of a lai'ge 
breeding chamber below and two sliding 
removable boxes called supers above for the 
abstraction of honey without disturbing the 
contents of the main chamber. It is of great 
importance that the apiary should be situ¬ 
ated in the neighbourhood of good feeding 
grounds, such as gardens, clover-fields, or 
heath-covered hills. When their stores of 
honey are removed the bees must be fed 
during the winter and part of spring with 
syrup or with a solution consisting of 2 lbs. 
loaf-sugar to a pint of water. In the early 
spring slow and continuous feeding (a few 
ounces of syrup each day) will stimulate 
the queen to deposit her eggs, by which 
means the colony is rapidly strengthened 
and throws off early swarms. New swarms 
may make their appearance as early as 
May and as late as August, but swarming 
usually takes place in the intervening 
months. 

Apic'ius, Marcus Gabius, a Roman epi¬ 
cure in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, 
who, having exhausted his vast fortune on 
the gratification of his palate, and having 
only about £80,000 left, poisoned himself 
that he might escape the misery of plain 
diet. The book of cookery published under 
the name of Apicius was written by one 
Caelius, and belongs to a much later date. 

A'pion, a Greek grammarian, born in 
Egypt, lived in the reigns of Tiberius, 
Caligula, and Claudius, a.d. 15-54, and 
went to Rome to teach grammar and 
rhetoric. Among his works, one or two 


fragments only of which remain, was one 
directed against the Jews, which was re¬ 
plied to by Josephus. 

A'pios, a genus of leguminous climbing 
plants, px*oducing edible tubers on under¬ 
ground shoots. An American species (A. 
tuber6m) has been used as a substitute for 
the potato, but its tubers, though numerous, 
are small. 

A'pis, a bull to which divine honours were 
paid by the ancient Egyptians, who regarded 
him as a symbol of Osiris. At Memphis he 
had a splendid residence, containing exten¬ 
sive walks and courts for his entertainment, 
and he was waited upon by a large train of 



priests, who looked upon his every move¬ 
ment as oracular. He was not suffered to 
live beyond twenty-five years, being secretly 
killed by the priests and thrown into a 
sacred well. Another bull, characterized 
by certain marks, as a black colour, a tri¬ 
angle of white on the forehead, a white 
crescent-shaped spot on the right side, &c., 
was selected in his place. His birthday was 
annually celebrated, and his death was a 
season of public mourning. 

A'pis, a genus of insects. See Bee. 

A'pium, a genus of umbelliferous plants, 
including celery. 

Aplacen'tal, a term applied to those 
mammals in which the young are destitute 
of a placenta. The aplacental mammals 
comprise the Monotremata and Marsupi- 
alia, the two lowest orders of mammals, in¬ 
cluding the duck-mole (ornithorhynchus), 
the porcupine ant-eater, kangaroo, &c. See 
Marsupialia and Monotremata. 

Aplanat'ic, in optics, a term specifically 
applied to reflectors, lenses, and combina¬ 
tions of them, capable of transmitting light 
without spherical aberration. An aplanatic 
lens is a lens constructed of different media 

190 









APOCYNACE^]. 


APLYSIA 


to correct the effects of the unequal refran- 
gibility of the different rays. 

Aplysia. See Sea-hare. 

Apoc alypse (Gr. apokalypsis, a revela¬ 
tion), the name frequently given to the last 
book of the New Testament, in the English 
version called The Revelation of St. John 
the Divine. It is generally believed that 
the Apocalypse was written by the apostle 
John in his old age (95-97 A.D.) in the Isle 
of Patinos, whither he had been banished 
by the Roman Emperor Domitian. An¬ 
ciently its genuineness was maintained by 
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alex¬ 
andria, Tertullian, and many others; while 
it was doubted by Dionysius of Alexandria, 
Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and, nearer 
our own times, by Luther and a majority of 
the eminent German commentators. The 
Apocalypse has been explained differently 
by almost every writer who has ventured to 
interpret it, and has furnished all sorts of 
sects and fanatics with quotations to sup¬ 
port their creeds or pretensions. The modern 
interpreters may be divided into three schools 
—namely, the historical school , who hold 
that the prophecy embraces the whole his¬ 
tory of the church and its foes from the 
time of its writing to the end of the world; 
the Prceterists, who hold that the whole or 
nearly the whole of the prophecy has been 
already fulfilled, and that it refers chiefly to 
the triumph of Christianity over Paganism 
and Judaism; and the Futurists, who throw 
the whole prophecy, except the first three 
chapters, forward upon a time not yet reached 
by the church—a period of no very long 
duration, which is immediately to precede 
Christ's second coming. 

Apocalyptic Number, the mystic number 
666 found in Rev. xiii. 18. As early as the 
second century ecclesiastical writers found 
that the name Antichrist was indicated by 
the Greek characters expressive of this 
number. By Irenaeus the word Lateinos 
was found in the letters of the number, and 
the Roman empire was therefore considered 
to be Antichrist. Protestants generally be¬ 
lieve it has reference to the Papacy, and, on 
the other hand, Catholics connect it with 
Protestantism. 

Apocar'pous, in botany, a term applied to 
such fruits as are the produce of a single 
flower, and are formed of one carpel, or a 
number of carpels free and separate from 
each other. 

Apoc'rypha (Greek, ‘things concealed or 
spurious’), a term applied in the earliest 

191 


churches to various sacred or professedly 
inspired writings, sometimes given to those 
whose authors were unknown, sometimes 
to those with a hidden meaning, and some¬ 
times to those considered objectionable. 
The term is specially applied to the fourteen 
undermentioned books which were written 
during the two centuries preceding the birth - 
of Christ. They were written, not in Hebrew, 
but in Greek, and the Jews never allowed 
them a place in their sacred canon. They 
were incorporated into the Septuagint, and 
thence passed to the Vulgate. The Greek 
Church excluded them from the canon in 
360 at the Council of Laodicea. The Latin 
Church treated them with more favour, but 
it was not until 1546 that they were for¬ 
mally admitted into the canon of the Church 
of Rome by a decree of the Council of 
Trent. The Anglican Church says they 
may be read for example of life and instruc¬ 
tion of manners, but that the church does 
not apply them to establish any doctrine. 
All other Protestant churches in Britain 
and America ignore them. The following 
fourteen books form the Apocrypha of the 
English Bible:—The first and second Books 
of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the rest of the 
Book of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, the 
Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, or Ec- 
clesiasticus, Baruch the Prophet, the Song 
of the Three Children, Susanna and the 
Elders, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of 
Manasses, and the first and second Books 
of Maccabees. Besides the Apocryphal 
books of the Old Testament there are many 
spurious books composed in the earlier ages 
of Christianity, and published under the 
names of Christ and his apostles, or of such 
immediate followers as from their character 
or means of intimate knowledge might give 
an apparent plausibility for such forgeries. 
These writings comprise: 1st, the Apocryphal 
Gospels, which treat of the history of Joseph 
and the Virgin before the birth of Christ, 
of the infancy of Jesus, and of the acts of 
Pilate; 2d, the Apocryphal Acts of the 
Apostles; and 3d, the Apocryphal Apoc¬ 
alypses. none of which have obtained can¬ 
onical recognition by any of the churches. 

Apocyna'cese, a nat. order of dicotyle¬ 
donous plants, having for its type the genus 
Apocynum or dog-bane. The species have 
opposite or sometimes whorled leaves with¬ 
out stipules; the corolla monopetalous, 
hypogynous, and with the stamens inserted 
upon it; fruit two-celled. The plants yield 
a milky juice, which is generally poisonous; 



A POD A 


♦ 


- APOLLO. 


Several yield caoutchouc, and a few edible 
fruits. The bark of several species is a 
powerful febrifuge. To the order belongs 
the periwinkle (Yinca). See Dog-bane, 
Cow-tree, Periwinkle, Oleander, Tanghin. 

Ap'oda (lit. footless animals), a name 
sometimes given to the snake-like or worm¬ 
like amphibians, as also to the apodal fishes 
(which see). 

Ap'odal Fishes, the name applied to such 
malacopterous fishes as want ventral fins. 
They constitute a small natural family, of 
which the common eel is an example. 

Apo’dosis, in gram., the latter member 
of a conditional sentence (or one beginning 
with if, though, &c.) dependent on the 
condition or protasis; as, if it rain ( protasis) 
I shall not go ( apodosis ). 

Ap'ogee (-je; Greek, apo, from, and ge, 
the earth), that point in the orbit of the 
moon or a planet where it is at its greatest 
distance from the earth; properly this par¬ 
ticular part of the moon’s orbit. 

Apol da, a town of Germany, in the 
Grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar, at which 
woollen goods are extensively manufac¬ 
tured, employing 7000 hands. Pop. 18,061. 

Apollina'rians, a sect of Christians who 
maintained the doctrine that the Logos 
(the Word) holds in Christ the place of the 
rational soul, and consequently that God 
was united in him with the human body 
and the sensitive soul Apollinaris, the 
author of this opinion, was, from a.d. 362 
till at least A.D. 382, Bishop of Laodicea, in 
Syria, and a zealous opposer of the Arians. 
As a man and a scholar he was highly 
esteemed, and was among the most popular 
authors of his time. He formed a congre¬ 
gation of his adherents at Antioch, and 
made Yitalis their bishop. The Apollina- 
rians, or Vitalians, as their followers were 
called, soon spread their sentiments in Syria 
and the neighbouring countries, established 
several societies, with their own bishops, 
and one even in Constantinople; but the 
sect was suppressed in 428 by imperial 
edict. 

Apollina'ris Water, a natural aerated 
water, belonging to the class of acidulated 
soda waters, and derived from the Apolli- 
narisbrunnen, a spring in the valley of the 
Ahr, near the Rhine, in Rhenish Prussia, 
forming a highly esteemed beverage. 

Apol'lo, son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Leto 
(Latona), who being persecuted by the 
jealousy of Hera (Juno), after tedious wan¬ 
derings and nine days’ labour, was delivered 


of him and his twin sister, Artemis (Diana), 
on the island of Delos. Skilled in the use 
of the bow, he slew the serpent Python on 
the fifth day after his birth; afterwards, 
with his sister Artemis, he killed the 
children of Niobe. He aided Zeus in the 
war with the Titans and the giants. He 
destroyed the Cyclopes, because they forged 
the thunderbolts with which Zeus killed his 
son and favourite Asklepios (AEsculapius). 
According to some traditions he invented 
the lyre, though this is generally ascribed 



to Hermes (Mercury). Apollo was origi¬ 
nally the sun-god; and though in Homer he 
appears distinct from Helios (the sun), yet 
his real nature is hinted at even here by 
the epithet Phoebus, that is, the radiant or 
beaming. In later times the view was al¬ 
most universal that Apollo and Helios were 
identical. From being the god of light and 
purity in a physical sense he gradually be¬ 
came the god of moral and spiritual light 
and purity, the source of all intellectual, 
social, and political progress. He thus came 
to be regarded as the god of sdng and pro¬ 
phecy, the god that wards off and heals 
bodily suffering and disease, the institutor 
and guardian of civil and political order, 
and the founder of cities. His worship was 
introduced at Rome at an early period, pro¬ 
bably in the time of the Tarquins. Among 
the ancient statues of Apollo that have 
come down to us, the most remarkable is 
the one called the Apollo Belvidere, from the 
Belvidere Gallery in the A^atican at Rome. 

192 
























APOLLODORUS 

This statue was found in the ruins of An- 
tium in 1503, and was purchased by Pope 
Julian II. It is now supposed to be a copy 
of a Greek statue of the third century B.C., 
and date* probably from the reign of 
Nero. 

Apollodo'rus, a Greek writer who flour¬ 
ished 140 B.c. Among the numerous works 
he wrote on various subjects, the only one 
extant is his Bibliotheca, which contains a 
concise account of the mythology of Greece 
down to the heroic age. 

Apollonius of Perga, Greek mathema¬ 
tician, called the ‘great geometer,’ flourished 
about 240 B.C., and was the author of many 
works, only one of which, a treatise on Conic 
Sections, partly in Greek and partly in an 
Arabic translation, is now extant. 

Apollo'nius of Rhodes, a Greek rhetori¬ 
cian and poet, flourished about 230 B.c. Of 
his various works we have only the Argo- 
nautica, an epic poem of moderate merit, 
though written with much care and labour, 
dealing with the story of the Argonautic 
expedition. 

Apollo'nius of Ty'ana, in Cappadocia, a 
Pythagorean philosopher who was born in 
the beginning of the Christian era, early 
adopted the Pythagorean doctrines, abstain¬ 
ing from animal food and maintaining a 
rigid silence for five years. He travelled 
extensively in Asia, professed to be endowed 
with miraculous powers, such as prophecy 
and the raising of the dead, and was on this 
account set up by some as a rival to Christ. 
His ascetic life, wise discourses, and won¬ 
derful deeds obtained for him almost uni¬ 
versal reverence, and temples, altars, and 
statues were erected to him. He died at 
Ephesus about the end of the first century. 
A narrative of his strange career, containing 
many fables, with, perhaps, a kernel of truth, 
was written by Philostratus about a cen¬ 
tury later. 

Apollo'nius of Tyre, the hero of a tale 
which had an immense popularity in the 
middle ages and which furnished the plot of 
Shakspere’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The 
story, originally in Greek, first appeared in 
the third century after Christ. 

Apoll'os, a Jew of Alexandria, who 
learned the doctrines of Christianity at 
Ephesus from Aquila and Priscilla, became 
a preacher of the gospel in Achaia and Cor¬ 
inth, and an assistant of Paul in his mis¬ 
sionary work. Some have regarded him as 
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

Apoll'yon (‘the Destroyer’), a name used 
VOL. i 193 


— APOPLEXY. 

in Rev. ix. 11 for the angel of the bottom¬ 
less pit. 

Apologetics (-jet'iks), a term applied to 
that branch of theological learning which 
consists in the systematic exhibition of the 
arguments for the divine origin of Chris¬ 
tianity. See Evidences of Christianity. 

Apologue (ap'o-log), a story or relation 
of fictitious events intended to convey some 
useful truths. It differs from a parable in 
that the latter is drawn from events that 
pass among mankind, whereas the apologue 
may be founded on supposed actions of 
brutes or inanimate things. HCsop’s fables 
are good examples of apologues. 

Apol'ogy, a term at one time applied to a 
defence of one who is accused, or of certain 
doctrines called in question. Of this nature 
are the Apologies of Socrates, attributed 
respectively to Plato and Xenophon. The 
name passed over to Christian authors, who 
gave the name of apologies to the writings 
which were designed to defend Christianity 
against the attacks and accusations of its 
enemies, particularly the pagan philosophers, 
and to justify its professors before the em¬ 
perors. Of this sort were those by Justin 
Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Tatian, 
and others. 

Aponeuro'sis, in anatomy, a name of cer¬ 
tain grayish-white shining membranes, com¬ 
posed of interlacing fibres, sometimes con¬ 
tinuous with the muscular fibre, and differing 

7 O 

from tendons merely in having a flat form. 
They serve several purposes, sometimes at¬ 
taching the muscles to the bones, sometimes 
surrounding the muscle and preventing its 
displacement, <fcc. 

Apophthegm (ap'o-them), a short pithy 
sentence or maxim. Julius Caesar wrote a 
collection of them, and we have a collection 
by Lord Bacon. 

Apoph'yllite, a species of mineral of a 
foliated structure and pearly lustre, called 
also fish-eye stone. It belongs to the Zeolite 
family, and is a hydrated silicate of lime 
and potash, containing also fluorine. 

Ap oplexy, abolition or sudden diminution 
of sensation and voluntary motion, from 
suspension of the functions of the cerebrum, 
resulting from congestion or rupture of the 
blood-vessels of the brain and resulting 
pressure on this organ. In a complete apo¬ 
plexy the person falls suddenly, is unable 
to move his limbs or to speak, gives no proof 
of seeing, hearing, or feeling, and the breath¬ 
ing is stertorous or snoring, like that of a 
person in deep sleep. The premonitory 



APOSIOPESIS 

symptoms of this dangerous disease are 
drowsiness, giddiness, dulness of hearing, 
frequent yawning, disordered vision, noise 
in the ears, vertigo, &c. It is most frequent 
between the ages of fifty and seventy. A 
large head, short neck, full chest, sanguine 
and plethoric constitution, and corpulency 
are generally considered signs of predisposi¬ 
tion to it; but the state of the heart’s action, 
with a plethoric condition of the vascular 
system, has a more marked influence. Out 
of 63 cases carefully investigated only 10 
were fat and plethoric, 23 being thin, and 
the rest of ordinary habit. Among the 
common predisposing causes are long and 
intense thought, continued anxiety, habitual 
indulgence of the temper and passions, sed¬ 
entary and luxurious living, sexual indul¬ 
gence, intoxication, &c. More or less com¬ 
plete recovery from a first and second attack 
is common, but a third is almost invariably 
fatal. 

Aposiope'sis, in rhetoric, a sudden break or 
stop in speaking or writing, usually for mere 
effect or a pretence of unwillingness to say 
anything on a subject; as, ‘his character is 
such—but it is better I should not speak of 
that' 

Apos'tasy (Gr. apostasis, a standing away 
from), a renunciation of opinions or practices 
and the adoption of contrary ones, usually 
applied to renunciation of religious opinions. 
It is always an expression of reproach. 
What one party calls apostasy is termed by 
the other conversion. Catholics, also, call 
those persons apostates who forsake a re¬ 
ligious order or renounce their religious 
vows without a lawful dispensation. 

A posterio'ri. See A priori. 

Apos'tles (literally persons sent out, from 
the Greek apostellein, to send out), the 
twelve men whom Jesus selected to attend 
him during his ministry, and to promulgate 
his religion. Their names were as follows: 
—Simon Peter, and Andrew his brother; 
James, and John his brother, sons of Zebe- 
dee; Philip; Bartholomew; Thomas; Mat¬ 
thew; James, the son of Alpheus; Lebbeus 
his brother, called Judas or Jude ; Simon, 
the Canaanite; and Judas Iscariot. To 
these were subsequently added Matthias 
(chosen by lot in place of Judas Iscariot) 
and Paul. The Bible gives the name of 
apostle to Barnabas also, who accompanied 
Paul on his missions (Acts xiv. 14). In a 
wider sense those preachers who first taught 
Christianity in heathen countries are some¬ 
times termed apostles; for example, St. 


— APOSTOLIC. 

Denis, the apostle of the Gauls; St. Boni¬ 
face, the apostle of Germany; St. Augustin, 
the apostle of England; Francis Xavier, 
the apostle of the Indies; Adalbert of 
Prague, apostle of Prussia Proper. During 
the life of the Saviour the apostles more 
than once showed a misunderstanding of 
the object of his mission, and during his 
sufferingsevinced littlecourage and firmness 
of friendship for their great and benevolent 
Teacher. After his death they received the 
Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, that 
they might be enabled to fulfil the impor¬ 
tant duties for which they had been chosen. 
Their subsequent history is only imperfectly 
known. According to one interpretation of 
Matthew xvi. 18 Christ seems to appoint St. 
Peter the first of the apostles; and the pope 
claims supreme authority from the power 
which Christ thus gave to St. Peter, of whom 
all the popes, according to the Catholic 
dogma, are successors in an uninterrupted 
line. 

Apostles’ Creed, a well-known formula 
or declaration of Christian belief, formerly 
believed to be the work of the apostles 
themselves, but it can only be traced to the 
fourth century. See Creed. 

Apostol'ic, Apostol'ical, pertaining or 
relating to the apostles.— Apostolic Church, 
the church in the time of the apostles, con¬ 
stituted according to their design. The name 
is also given to the four churches of Pome, 
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and 
is claimed by the Homan Catholic Church, 
and occasionally by the Episcopalians.— 
Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, a 
collection of regulations attributed to the 
apostles, but generally supposed to be 
spurious. They appeared in the fourth 
century; are divided into eight books, and 
consist of rules and precepts relating to the 
duty of Christians, and particularly to the 
ceremonies and discipline of the church.— 
A postolic fathers, the Christian writers who 
during any part of their lives were contem¬ 
porary with the apostles. There are five— 
Clement, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Poly¬ 
carp.— Apostolic king, a title granted by the 
pope to the kings of Hungary, first conferred 
on St. Stephen, the founder of the royal line 
of Hungary, on account of what he accom¬ 
plished in the spread of Christianity.— 
Apostolic see, the see of the popes or bishops 
of Home: so called because the popes pro¬ 
fess themselves the successors of St. Peter, its 
founder.— Apostolic succession, the uninter¬ 
rupted succession of bishops, and through 

194 



ABOSTOLICS-APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS. 


them, of priests and deacons (these three 
orders of ministers being called the apos¬ 
tolical orders), in the church by regular or¬ 
dination from the first apostles down to the 
present day. All Episcopal churches hold 
theoretically, and the Roman Catholic 
Church and many members of the English 
Church strictly, that such succession is 
essential to the officiating priest, in order 
that grace may be communicated through 
his administrations. 

Apostol'ics, Apostolici, or Apostolic 
Brethren, the name given to certain sects 
who professed to imitate the manners and 
practice of the apostles. The last and most 
important of these sects was founded about 
1260 by Gerhard Segarelli of Parma. They 
went barefooted, begging, preaching, and 
singing throughout Italy, Switzerland, and 
France; announced the coming of the king¬ 
dom of heaven and of purer times; denounced 
the papacy, and its corrupt and worldly 
church; and inculcated the complete renunci¬ 
ation of all worldly ties, of property, settled 
abode, marriage, &c. This society was for¬ 
mally abolished, 1286, by Honorius IV. In 
1300 Segarelli was burned as a heretic, but 
another chief apostle appeared—Dolcino, a 
learned man of Milan. In self-defence 
they stationed themselves in fortified places 
whence they might resist attacks. After 
having devastated a large tract of country 
belonging to Milan they were subdued, A.n. 
1307, by the troops of Bishop Raynerius, 
in their fortress Zebello, in Vercelli, and 
almost all destroyed. Dolcino was burned. 
The survivors afterwards appeared in Lom¬ 
bardy and in the south of France as late as 
1368. 

Apo'strophe (Greek, ‘a turning away 
from’), a rhetorical figure by which the 
orator changes the course of his speech, and 
makes a short impassioned address to one 
absent as if he were present, or to things 
without life and sense as if they had life 
and sense. The same term is also applied 
to a comma when used to contract a word, 
or to mark the possessive case, as in ‘John’s 
book.’ 

Apothecaries’ weight, the weight used 
in dispensing drugs, in which the pound (lb.) 
is divided into 12 ounces (§), the ounce into 
8 drachms 3), the drachm into 3 scruples 
(3), and the scruple into 20 grains (grs.), 
the grain being equivalent to that in avoir¬ 
dupois weight. 

Apoth ecary, in a general sense, one who 
keeps a shop or laboratory for preparing, 

195 


compounding, and vending medicines, and 
for the making up of medical prescriptions. 
In England the term was long applied (as 
to some little extent still) to a regularly 
licensed class of medical practitioners, being 
such persons as were members of, or licensed 
by, the Apothecaries' Company in London. 
The apothecaries of London were at one 
time ranked with the grocers, with whom 
they were incorporated by James I. in 1606. 
In 1617, however, the apothecaries received 
a new charter as a distinct company. They 
were not yet regarded as having the right 
to prescribe, but only to dispense, medicines; 
but in 1703 the House of Lords conferred 
that right on them, and they latterly be¬ 
came a well-established branch of the medi¬ 
cal profession. In 1815 an act was passed 
providing that no person should practise as 
an apothecary in any part of England or 
Wales unless after serving an apprenticeship 
of five years with a member of the society, 
and receiving a certificate from the society’s 
examiners. As in country places every 
practitioner must be to some extent an 
apothecary, this act gave the society an 
undue influence over the medical profession. 
Dissatisfaction therefore long prevailed, but 
nothing of importance was done till the 
Medical Act of 1858, which brought the 
desired reform. The Apothecaries’ Com¬ 
pany have prescribed a course of medical 
instruction and practice for candidates for 
the license of the society. In the United 
States the several States have laws con¬ 
trolling apothecaries. 

Apothe'cium, in botany, the receptacle of 
lichens, consisting of the spore-cases or asci, 
and of the paraphyses or barren threads. 

Apotheo'sis (deification), a solemnity 
among the ancients by which a mortal was 
raised to the rank of the gods. The custom 
of placing mortals, who had rendered their 
countrymen important services, among the 
gods was very ancient among the Greeks. 
The Romans, for several centuries, deified 
none but Romulus, and first imitated the 
Greeks in the fashion of frequent apotheosis 
after the time of Cfesar. From this period 
apotheosis was regulated by the decrees of 
the senate, and accompanied with great 
solemnities. The greater part of the Roman 
emperors were deified. 

Appalachian Mountains (ap - pa - la'- 
ehi-an), also called Alleghanies, a vast 
mountain range in N. America extending 
for 1300 miles from Cape Gaspe, on the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, S.w. to Alabama.. 



Appalachicola-APPEAL. 


The system ha* been divided into three 
great sections: the northern (including the 
Adirondack, the Green Mountains, the 
White Mountains, &c.), from Cape Gaspe to 
New York; the central (including a large 
portion of the Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies 
proper, and numerous lesser ranges), from 
New York to the valley of the New River; 
and the southern (including the continuation 
of the Blue Ridge, the Black Mountains, the 
Smoky Mountains, &c., from the New River 
southwards. The chain consists of several 
ranges generally parallel to each other, the 
altitude of the individual mountains increas¬ 
ing on approaching the south. The highest 
peaks rise over 6600 feet (not one at all 
approaching the snow-level), but the mean 
height is about 2500 feet. Lake Champlain 
is the only lake of great importance in the 
system, but numerous rivers of considerable 
size take their rise here. Magnetite, hematite, 
and other iron ores occur in great abundance, 
and the coal-measures are among the most 
extensive in the world. Gold, silver, lead, 
and copper are also found, but not in paying 
quantities, while marble, limestone, fire-clay, 
gypsum, and salt abound. The forests 
covering many of the ranges yield large 
quantities of valuable timber, such as sugar- 
maple, white birch, beech, ash, oak, cherry- 
tree, white poplar, white and yellow pine, 
&c., while they form the haunts of large 
numbers of bears, panthers, wild cats, and 
wolves. 

Appalachicola (-chi-co'la), a river of the 
United States, formed by the Chattahoochee 
and Flint Rivers, which unite near the 
northern border of Florida; length, about 
100 miles; flows into the Gulf of Mexico, 
and is navigable. 

Appanage. See Apanage. 

Appa'rent, among mathematicians and 
astronomers, applied to things as they 
appear to the eye, in distinction from what 
they really are. Thus they speak of 
apparent motion, magnitude, distance, 
height, &c. The apparent magnitude of a 
heavenly body is the angle subtended at the 
spectator’s eye by the diameter of that body, 
and this, of course, depends on the distance 
as well as the real magnitude of the body; 
apparent motion is the motion a body seems 
to have in consequence of our own motion, 
as the motion of the sun from east to 
west, &c. 

Appari'tion, according to a belief held by 
some, a disembodied spirit manifesting itself 
to mortal sight; according to the common 


theory an illusion involuntarily generated, 
by means of which figures or forms, not 
present to the actual sense, are nevertheless 
depictured with a vividness and intensity 
sufficient to create a temporary belief of 
their reality. Such illusions are now gener¬ 
ally held to result from an overexcited brain, 
a strong imagination, or some bodily malady. 
In perfect health the mind not only pos¬ 
sesses a control over its powers, but the 
impressions of the external objects alone 
occupy its attention, and the play of imagi¬ 
nation is consequently checked, except in 
sleep, when its operations are relatively 
more feeble and faint. But in the unhealthy 
state of the mind, when its attention is 
partly withdrawn from the contemplation of 
external objects, the impressions of its own 
creation, or rather reproduction, will either 
overpower or combine themselves with the 
impressions of external objects, and thus 
generate illusions which in the one case 
appear alone, while in the other they are 
seen projected among those external objects 
to which the eyeball is directed. This 
theory explains satisfactorily a large major¬ 
ity of the stories of apparitions; still there 
are some which it seems insufficient to 
account for. In recent times, though the 
belief in ghosts of the old and orthodox 
class may be said to have almost died out, 
a new and kindred faith has arisen, that of 
Spiritualism. 

Appeal', in legal phraseology, the removal 
of a cause from an inferior tribunal to a 
superior, in order that the latter may revise, 
and if it seem needful reverse or amend, the 
decision of the former. The supreme court 
of appeal for Great Britain is the House of 
Lords. Till recently there were certain 
defects in connection with the settlement of 
appeals by this body, but these have been 
remedied by the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 
1876, while a new court of appeal has also 
been established as a division of the Supreme 
Court of Judicature. In Ireland there is 
also a Court of Appeal similar to that in 
England; while in Scotland the highest 
court is the Court of Session. In the 
United States the system of appeals dif¬ 
fers in different States. In legislative 
bodies, the act by which a member, who 
questions the correctness of a decision 
of the presiding officer, or chairman, pro¬ 
cures a vote of the body upon the decision. 
In the House of Representatives of the 
United States the question of an appeal is 
put to the House in this form : “ Shall the 

196 



APPENZELL-APPIUS CLAUDIUS. 


decision of the chair stand as the judgment 
ot the House?” If the appeal relates to 
an alleged breach of decorum, or transgres¬ 
sion of the rules of order, the question 
is taken without debate. If it relates to 
the admissibility or relevancy of a propo¬ 
sition, debate is permitted, except when a 
motion for the previous question is pend¬ 
ing. 

Appenzell (ap'pen-tsel), a Swiss canton, 
wholly inclosed by the canton of St. Gall; 
area, 162 square miles. It is divided into 
two independent portions or half-cautons, 
Ausser-Rhoden, which is Protestant, and 
Inner - Rhoden, 
which is Catholic. 

It is an elevated 
district, traversed 
by branches of 
the Alps; Mount 
Sentis in the 
centre being 8250 
feet high. It is 
watered by the 
Sitter a id by sev¬ 
eral smaller afflu¬ 
ents of the Rhine. 

Glaciers occupy 
the higher valleys. Flax, hemp, grain, 
fruit, &c., are produced, but the wealth of 
Inner-Rhoden lies in its herds and flocks — 
that of Outer-Rhoden in its manufactures 
of embroidered muslins, gauzes, cambrics, 
and other cotton stuffs; also of silk goods 
and paper. The town of Appenzell (Ger¬ 
man, Abtenzelle, abbot’s cell) is the capital 
of Inner-Rhoden, on the Sitter, with about 
4300 inhabitants. Trogen is the capital of 
Outer-Rhoden, Herisau the largest town 
(pop. 11,000). Pop. Outer-Rhoden, 51,960; 
Inner-Rhoden, 12,882. 

Ap'petite, in its widest sense, means the 
natural desire for gratification, either of the 
body or the mind; but is generally applied 
to the recurrent and intermittent desire for 
food. A healthy appetite is favoured by 
work, exercise, plain living, and cheerful¬ 
ness ; absence of this feeling, or defective 
appetite {anorexia), indicates diseased action 
of the stomach, or of the nervous system or 
circulation, or it may result from vicious 
habits. Depraved appetite {pica), or a de¬ 
sire for unnatural food, as chalk, ashes, dirt, 
soap, &c., depends often in the case of chil¬ 
dren on vicious tastes or habits; in grown¬ 
up persons it may be symptomatic of dys¬ 
pepsia, pregnancy, or chlorosis. Insatiable 
pr canine appetite or voracity ( bulimia ) when 

197 


it occurs in childhood is generally symp¬ 
tomatic of worms; in adults common causes 
are pregnancy, vicious habits, and indiges¬ 
tion caused by stomach complaints or glut¬ 
tony, when the gnawing pains of disease are 
mistaken for hunger. 

Ap'pian, a Roman historian of the second 
century after Christ, a native of Alexan¬ 
dria, Was governor and manager of the 
imperial revenues under Hadrian, Trajan, 
and Antoninus Pius, in Rome. He com-, 
piled in Greek a Roman history, from the 
earliest times to those of Augustus, in 
twenty-four books, of which only eleven 

have come down 
to us — of little 
value. 

Appia'ni, An¬ 
drea, a painter, 
born at Milan in 
1754, died in 
1817. As a fresco- 
painter he ex¬ 
celled every con¬ 
temporary painter 
in Italy. He dis¬ 
played his skill 
particularly in the 
cupola of Santa Maria di S. Celso at 
Milan, and in the paintings representing 
the legend of Cupid and Psyche, prepared 
for the walls and ceiling of the villa of 
the Archduke Ferdinand at Monza (1795). 
Napoleon appointed him royal court painter, 
and portraits of almost the whole of the 
imperial family were painted by him. 

Appian Way, called Regina Yiarum, the 
Queen of Roads: the oldest and most re¬ 
nowned Roman road, was constructed dur¬ 
ing the censorship of Appius Claudius 
Caecus (b.c. 313-310). It was built with 
large square stones on a raised platform, and 
was made direct from the gates of Rome 
to Capua, in Campania. It was afterwards 
extended through Samnium and Apulia to 
Brundusium, the modern Brindisi. It was 
partially restored by Pius VI., and in 1850- 
53 it was excavated by order of Pius IX. as 
far as the eleventh milestone from Borne. 

Appius Claudius, surnamed Cacm, or 
the blind, an ancient Roman, elected cen¬ 
sor B.c. 312, which office he held four years. 
While in this position he made every effort 
to weaken the power of the plebs and con¬ 
structed the road and aqueduct named after 
him. He was subsequently twi e consul, 
and once dictator. In his old age he be¬ 
cause blind, but in b»c. 280 lie made ft 



Construction of a Portion of the Appian Way. 















APPIUS CLAUDIUS CRASSUS 


famous speech in which he induced the 
senate to reject the terms of peace fixed by 
Pyrrhus. He is the earliest Roman writer 
of prose and verse whose name we know. 

Appius Claudius Crassus, one of the 
Roman decemvirs , appointed B.c. 451 to 
draw up a new code of laws. He and his 
colleagues plotted to retain their power per¬ 
manently, and at the expiry of their year 
of office refused to give up their authority. 
The people were incensed against them, and 
the following circumstances led to their 
overthrow. Appius Claudius had conceived 
an evil passion for Virginia, the daughter 
of Lucius Virginius, then absent with the 
army in the war with the H5qui and Sabines. 
At the instigation of Appius, Marcus Clau¬ 
dius, one of his clients, claimed Virginia as 
the daughter of one of his own female 
slaves, and the decemvir, acting as judge, 
decided that in the meantime she should 
remain in the custody of the claimant. 
Virginius, hastily summoned from the army, 
appeared with his daughter next day in the 
forum, and appealed to the people; but 
Appius Claudius again adjudged her to M. 
Claudius. Unable to rescue his daughter, 
the unhappy father stabbed her to the heart. 
The decemvirs were deposed by the indig¬ 
nant people B.c. 449, and Appius Claudius 
died in prison or was strangled. 

Apple (Pyrus Malus), the fruit of a well- 
known tree of the nat. order Rosacea;, or the 
tree itself. The apple belongs to the tem¬ 
perate regions of the globe, over which it is 
almost universally spread and cultivated. 
The tree attains a moderate height, with 
spreading branches; the leaf is ovate; and 
the flowers are produced from the wood of 
the former year, but more generally from 
very short shoots or spurs from wood of two 
years’ growth. The original of all the varie¬ 
ties of the cultivated apple is the wild crab, 
which has a small and extremely sour fruit, 
and is a native of most of the countries of 
Eur< >pe. The apple was probably introduced 
into Britain by the Romans. To the facility 
of multiplying varieties by grafting is to be 
ascribed the amazing extension of the sorts 
of apples. Many of the more marked varie¬ 
ties are known by general names, as pippins, 
codlins, rennets, &c. Apples for the table 
are characterized by a firm juicy pulp, a 
sweetish acid flavour, regular form, and 
beautiful colouring ; those for cooking by 
the property of forming by the aid of heat 
into a pulpy mass of equal consistency, as 
jdso by their large size and keeping proper- 


APPOINTMENT. 

ties: apples for cider must have a consid¬ 
erable degree of astringency, with richness 
of juice. The propagation of apple-trees is 
accomplished by seeds, cuttings, suckers, 
layers, budding, or grafting, the last being 
almost the universal practice. The tree 
thrives best in a rich deep loam or marshy 
clay, but will thrive in any soil provided it 
is not too wet or too dry. The wood of the 
apple-tree or the common crab is hard, close- 
grained, and often richly coloured, and is 
suitable for turning and cabinet work. The 
fermented juice ( verjuice ) of the crab is 
employed in cookery and medicine. Cider, 
the fermented juice of the apple, is a fa¬ 
vourite drink in many parts of the Uni¬ 
ted States. The designation apple, with 
various modifying words, is applied to a 
number of fruits having nothing in common 
with the apple proper, as alligator-apple, 
love-apple, &c. 

Ap'pleby, county town of Westmoreland, 
England, on the Eden, 28 miles s.s.E. Car¬ 
lisle, giving its name to a pari. div. of the 
county. It has an old castle, the keep of 
which, called Caesar's Tower, is still fairly 
preserved. Pop. 1989. 

Apple of discord, according to the story 
in the Greek mythology, the golden apple 
thrown into an assembly of the gods by the 
goddess of discord (Eris) bearing the inscrip¬ 
tion ‘for the fairest.’ Aphrodite (Venus), 
Hera (Juno), and Pallas (Minerva) became 
competitors for it, and its adjudication to 
the first by Paris so inflamed the jealousy 
and hatred of Hera to all of the Trojan race 
(to which Paris belonged) that she did not 
cease her machinations till Troy was de¬ 
stroyed. 

Apple of Sodom, a fruit described by old 
w riters as externally of fair appearance, but 
turning to ashes when plucked; probably 
the fruit of Solanum sodomeum. 

Ap'pleton, a city of Wisconsin, U.S., 100 
m. N.w. of Milwaukee by rail. It has many 
flour, paper, saw, and woollen mills, and 
other manufactories, and is the seat of a 
collegiate institute and of Law r rence Uni¬ 
versity. Pop. 1890, 11,869. 

Appoggiatura (ap-poj-a-to'ra), in music, 
a small additional note of embellishment 
preceding the note to which it is attached, 
and taking aw r ay from the principal note a 
portion of its time. 

Appoint'ment, in chancery practice, 
signifying the exercise of some power, re¬ 
served in a conveyance or settlement, of 
burdening, selling, or otherwise disposing of 

198 



APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE-APRIL. 


the lands or property conveyed. Such a 
reserved power is termed a power of appoint¬ 
ment. 

Appomatt'ox Court-house, a village in 
Virginia, U.S., 20 m. E. of Lynchburg. Here 
on 9th April, 1865, Gen. Lee surrendered 
to Gen. Grant, and thus virtually concluded 
the American civil war. 

Apposi tion, in grammar, the relation in 
which one or more nouns or substantive 
phrases or clauses stand to a noun or pro¬ 
noun, which they explain or characterize 
without being predicated of it, and with 
which they agree in case; as Cicero, the 
orator, lived in the first century before 
Christ; the opinion, that a severe winter is 
generally folloiced by a good summer, is a 
vulgar error. 

Appraiser, one who appraises; a person 
appointed and sworn to set a value upon 
things to be sold. 

Apprehend, to grasp in the hands; in this 
sense it is now confined to the legal arrest 
of persons. 

Apprehension, the capture of a person 
upon a criminal charge. The term arrest 
is applied to civil cases ; as, a person hav¬ 
ing authority may arrest on civil process, 
and apprehend on a criminal warrant. See 
Arrest. 

Apprentice, one bound by indenture to 
serve some particular individual for a 
specified time, in order to be instructed in 
some art, science, or trade. At common 
law an infant may bind himself apprentice 
by indenture, because it is for his benefit. 
But this contract, on account of its liability 
to abuse, has been regulated by statute in 
the United States, and is not binding upon 
the infant unless entered into by him with 
the conseut of the parent or guardian, or by 
the parent or guardian for him, with his 
consent. The duties of the master are, to in¬ 
struct the apprentice by teaching him the 
knowledge of the art which he had under¬ 
taken to teach him, though he will be ex¬ 
cused for not making a good workman, if 
the apprentice is incapable of learning the 
trade. He cannot dismiss his apprentice 
except by consent of all the parties to the 
indenture. An apprentice is bound to obey 
his master in all his lawful commands, take 
care of his property, and promote his in¬ 
terests, and endeavour to learn his trade or 
business, and perform all the covenants in 
his indenture not contrary to law. He must 
not leave his master’s service during the 
term of his apprenticeship. 

199 


Approaches, zigzag trenches made to 
connect the parallels in besieging a fort¬ 
ress. 

Appropriation. In the United States 
no money can be drawn from the Treasury, 
but in consequence of appropriations made 
by law (Constitution, Art. I.). Under 
this clause it is necessary for Congress to 
appropriate money for the support of the 
Federal government, and in payment of 
claims against it. In House of Represent¬ 
atives appropriation bills have precedence. 

Approximation, a term used in mathe¬ 
matics to signify a continual approach to a 
quantity required, when no process is known 
for arriving at it exactly. Although, by 
such an approximation, the exact value of a 
quantity cannot be discovered, yet, in prac¬ 
tice, it may be found sufficiently correct; 
thus the diagonal of a square, whose sides 
are represented by unity, is \/2, the exact 
value of which quantity cannot be obtained; 
but its approximate value may be substi¬ 
tuted in the nicest calculations. 

Appuleius. See Apuleius. 

Ap'ricot (Prunus Armeniaca), a fruit of 
the plum genus which was introduced into 
Europe from Asia more than three centu¬ 
ries before Christ, and into England in the 
first half of the sixteenth century. It is a 
native of Armenia and other parts of Asia 
and also of Africa. The apricot is a low 
tree, of rather crooked growth, with some¬ 
what heart-shaped leaves and sessile flow¬ 
ers. Ihe fruit is sweet, more or less juicy, 
of a yellowish colour, about the size of the 
peach, and resembling it in delicacy of 
flavour. The wood is coarsely grained and 
soft. Apricot-trees are chiefly raised against 
walls, and are propagated by budding and 
grafting. 

Apries (a'pri-ez), Pharaoh-Hophra of 
Scripture, the eighth king of the twenty - 
sixth Egyptian dynasty. He succeeded his 
father Psamuthius in 590 or 588 B.C. The 
Jews under Zedekiah revolted against their 
Babylonian oppressors and allied themselves 
with Apries, who was, however, unable to 
raise the siege of Jerusalem, which was 
taken by Nebuchadnezzar. A still more un¬ 
fortunate expedition against Cyrene brought 
about revolt in his army, in endeavouring 
to suppress which Apries was defeated and 
slain about b.c. 569. 

A'pril (Lat. Aprilis, from aperire, to open, 
because the buds open at this time), the 
fourth month of the year. The strange 
custom of making fools on the 1st April by 



A PRIORI-APTERYX. 


sending people upon errands and expeditions 
which end in disappointment, and raise a 
laugh at the expense of the person sent, pre¬ 
vails throughout Europe. It has been con¬ 
nected with the miracle plays of the middle 
ages, in which the Saviour was represented 
as having been sent, at this period of the 
year, from Annas to Caiaphas and from 
Pilate to Herod. In France the party fooled 
is called un poisson d'avril , ‘an April fish.’ 

A priori (‘from what goes before’), a 
phrase applied to a mode of reasoning by 
which we proceed from general principles 
or notions to particular cases, as opposed to 
a posteriori (‘from what comes after’) reason¬ 
ing, by which we proceed from knowledge 
previously acquired. Mathematical proofs 
are of the a priori kind; the conclusions of 
experimental science are a posteriori. It is 
also a term applied to knowledge indepen¬ 
dent of all experience. 

Apse, a portion of any building forming 
a termination or projection semicircular or 



polygonal in plan, and having a roof forming 
externally a semi-dome or semi-cone, or 
having ridges corresponding to the angles 
of the polygon; especially such a semi¬ 
circular or polygonal recess projecting from 
the east end of the choir or chancel of a 
church, in which the altar is placed. The 
apse was developed from the somewhat 
similar part of the Roman basilicas, in which 
the magistrate ( prcetor) sat. 

Ap'sheron, a peninsula on the western 
shore of the Caspian Sea formed bv the 
eastern extremity of the Caucasus Moun¬ 
tains. It extends for about 40 m., and 


terminates in Cape Apsheron. It yields 
immense quantities of petroleum. See Baku. 

Apsis, pi. Ap'sides or Apsi'des, in astron. 
one of the two points of the orbit of a hea¬ 
venly body situated at the extremities of 
the major axis of the ellipse formed by the 
orbit, one of the 
points being that 
at which the body 
is at its greatest 
and the other that 
at which it is at 
its least distance 
from its primary. 

In regard to the a a, Apsides, 

earth and the other 

planets, these two points correspond to 
the aphelion and perihelion; and in regard 
to the moon they correspond to the apogee 
and perigee. The line of the apsides has a 
slow forward angular motion in the plane of 
the planet’s orbit, being retrograde only in 
Venus. This in the earth’s orbit produces 
the anomalistic year. See A nomaly. 

Apt (at; anc. Apta Julia), a town of 
southern France, department Vaucluse, 32 
miles east by south of Avignon, with an 
ancient Gothic cathedral. Pop. 4362. 

Ap'tera, wingless insects, such as lice and 
certain others. 

Ap'teryx, a nearly extinct genus of cur¬ 
sorial birds, distinguished from the ostriches 
by having three toes with a rudimentary 
hallux, which forms a spur. They are na¬ 
tives of the South Island of New Zealand; 
are totally wingless and tailless, with fea- 



Apteryx (Apteryx Mantelli). 


thers resembling hairs; about the size of a 
small goose; with long curved beak some¬ 
thing like that of a curlew. They are en¬ 
tirely nocturnal, feeding on insects, worms, 
and seeds.— A. australis , called Kiwi-kiivi 
from its cry, is the best-known species. 

200 























































APULEIUS— 

Apuleius, or Appuleius (ap-u-leus), au¬ 
thor of the celebrated satirical romance in 
Latin called the Golden Ass, born at Ma- 
daura, in Numidia, in the early part of the 
second century a.d.; the time of his death 
unknown. He studied at Carthage, then at 
Athens, where he became warmly attached, 
in particular, to the Platonic philosophy, 
and finally at Rome. Returning to Car¬ 
thage he married a rich widow, whose rela¬ 
tives accused him of gaining her consent by 
magic, and the speech by which he success¬ 
fully defended himself is still extant. Be¬ 
sides his Golden Ass, with its fine episode 
of Cupid and Psyche, he w r as also the author 
of many works on philosophy and rhetoric, 
some of which are still extant. 

Apu lia, a department or division in the 
south-east of Italy, on the Adriatic, com¬ 
posed of the provinces of Foggia, Bari, and 
Lecce; area, 8539 sq. miles; pop. 1,587,713. 

Apure (a-po'ra), a navigable river of 
Venezuela, formed by the junction of seve¬ 
ral streams which rise in the Andes of Co¬ 
lombia; it falls into the Orinoco. 

Apurimac (a-po-re-mak'), a river of South 
America, which rises in the Andes of Peru; 
and being augmented by the Vilcamayu and 
other streams forms the Ucayale, one of the 
principal head-waters of the Amazon. 

Aq'ua (Latin for water), a word much used 
in pharmacy and old chemistry.— Aqua 
fortis (= strong water), a weak and impure 
nitric acid. It has the power of eating into 
steel and copper, and hence is used by en¬ 
gravers, etchers, &c.— Aqua marina, a fine 
variety of beryl. See Aquamarine.—Aqua 
regia, or aqua regaiis (= royal water), a 
mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, 
with the power of dissolving gold and other 
noble metals.— Aqua Tofana, a poisonous 
fluid made about the middle of the seven¬ 
teenth century by an Italian woman Tofana 
or Toffania, who is said to have procured 
the death of no fewer than 600 individuals 
by means of it. It consisted chiefly, it is 
supposed, of a solution of crystallized arse¬ 
nic.— Aqua vitce (— water of life), or simply 
aqua, a name familiarly applied to the 
whisky of Scotland, corresponding in mean¬ 
ing with the usquebaugh of Ireland, the 
eau de vie (brandy) of the French. 

Aqua-fortis. See above art. 

Aq'uamarine, a name given to some of 
the finest varieties of beryl of a sea-green 
or blue colour. Varieties of topaz are also 
so called. 

AquaTium, a vessel or series of vessels 
201 


-AQUEDUCT. 

constructed wholly or partly of glass and 
containing salt or fresh water in which are 
kept living specimens of marine or fresh¬ 
water animals along with aquatic plants. 
In principle the aquarium depends on the 
interdependence of animal and vegetable 
life; animals consuming oxygen and exhal¬ 
ing carbonic acid, plants reversing the pro¬ 
cess by absorbing carbonic acid and giving 
out oxygen. The aquarium must conse¬ 
quently be stocked both with plants and 
animals, and for the welfare of both some¬ 
thing like a proper proportion should exist 
between them. The simplest form of aqua¬ 
rium is that of a glass vase; but aquariums 
on a larger scale consist of a tank or a num¬ 
ber of tanks with plate-glass sides and stone 
floors, and contain sand and gravel, rocks, 
sea-weeds, &c. By improved arrangements 
light is admitted from above, passing through 
the water in the tanks and illuminating 
their contents, while the spectator is in 
comparative darkness. Aquariums on a 
large scale have been constructed in con¬ 
nection with public parks or gardens, and 
the name is also given to places of public 
entertainment in which large aquariums are 
exhibited. 

Aquarius (L.), the Water-bearer; a sign 
in the zodiac which the sun enters about 
the 21st of January: so called from the rains 
which prevail at that season in Italy and 
the East. 

Aquatint, a method of etching on copper 
by which a beautiful effect is produced, re¬ 
sembling a fine drawing in sepia or Indian 
ink. The special character of the effect is 
the result of sprinkling finely powdered 
resin or mastic over the plate, and causing 
this to adhere by heat, the design being 
previously etched, or being now traced out. 
The nitric acid (aqua fortis) acts only in the 
interstices between the particles of resin or 
mastic, thus giving a slightly granular ap¬ 
pearance. 

Aqua Tofa'na. See Aqua. 

Aqua vitse. See A qua. 

Aq'ueduct (Lat. aqua, water, duco, to 
lead), an artificial channel or conduit for 
the conveyance of water from one place to 
another: more particularly applied to struc¬ 
tures for conveying water from distant 
sources for the supply of large cities. Aque¬ 
ducts were extensively used by the Romans, 
and many of them still remain in different 
places on the Continent of Europe, some 
being still in use. The Pont du Gard in 
the south of France, 14 m. from Nlsrnes, is 



AQUEOUS HUMOUR-AQUINAS. 


still nearly perfect, and is a grand monu¬ 
ment of the Roman occupation of this coun¬ 
try. The ancient aqueducts were con¬ 
structed of stone or brick, sometimes tun¬ 
nelled through hills, and carried over valleys 
and rivers on arches. The Pont du Gard is 
built of great blocks of stone; its height is 
160 feet; length of the highest arcade, 882 ft. 
The aqueduct at Segovia, originally built 
by the Romans, has in some parts two tiers 
of arcades 100 feet high, is 2921 feet in 
length, and is one of the most admired 


works of antiquity. One of the most re¬ 
markable aqueducts of modern times is that 
constructed by Louis XIV. for conveying 
the waters of the Eure to Versailles. The 
extensive application of metal pipes has 
rendered the construction of aqueducts of 
the old type unnecessary; but what may be 
called aqueduct bridges are still frequently 
constructed in connection with water-works 
for the supply of towns, and where canals 
exist canal aqueducts are common, since 
the water in a canal must be kept on a 



The Pont du Gard Aqueduct. 


perfect level. In the United States there 
are some important aqueducts, as the Croton, 
about 40^ m. long, bringing water to New 
York. 

Aq'ueous Humour, the limpid watery 
fluid which fills the space between the 
cornea and the crystalline lens in the 
eye. 

Aqueous rocks, mechanically formed 
rocks, composed of matter deposited by 
water. Called also sedimentary or stratified 
rocks. See Geology. 

Aquifolia'cese, a nat. order of plants; the 
holly tribe. The species consist of trees 
and shrubs, and the order includes the 
common holly ( Ilex Aquifolium) and the 
I. paraguayensis, or Paraguayan tea tree. 

Aquila (ak'we-la), a town in Italy, capital 
of the province of Aquila, 55 miles north¬ 
east of Rome, the seat of a bishop, an attrac¬ 
tive and interesting town with spacious 
streets and handsome palaces. In 1703 and 
1706 it suffered severely from earthquakes. 


Pop. 14,720. The province has an area of 
2509 sq. miles, a population of 371,332. 

Aq'uila, a native of Pontus, flourished 
about 130 a.d., celebrated for his exceed¬ 
ingly close and accurate translation of the 
Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. 

Aq'uila. See Eagle. 

Aquila'ria. See Aloes-wood. 

Aquile'gia, a genus of plants. See 
Columbine. 

Aquileia (ak-wi-le'a), an ancient city 
near the head of the Adriatic Sea, in Upper 
Italy, built by the Romans in 182 or 181 B.c. 
Commanding the n.e. entrance into Italy it 
became important as a commercial centre 
and a military post, and was frequently the 
base of imperial campaigns. In 425 it was 
destroyed by Attila. The modern Aquileia 
or Aglar is a small place of some 1700 
inhabitants, consisting chiefly of fishermen. 

Aquinas (a-kwl'nas; i.e. of Aquino), St. 
Thomas, a celebrated scholastic divine, born 
about 1227, died in 1274; descended from 

202 























ARABIA 


Englis h Statute Miles 


West of 


GeVbie & Co. Plnladelphia 



















AQUITANIA 


ARABIA. 


the counts of Aquino, in the Kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies. He was educated at the 
Benedictine monastery of Monte Casino, 
and at the University of Naples, where he 
studied for six years. About the age of 
seventeen he entered a convent of Domini¬ 
cans, much against the wishes of his family. 
He attended the lectures of Albertus 
Magnus at Cologne, in whose company he 
visited Paris in 1245 or 1246. Here he 
became involved in the dispute between 
the university and the Begging Friars as 
to the liberty of teaching, advocating the 
rights claimed by the latter with great 
energy. In 1257 he received the degree 
of doctor from the Sorbonne, and began 
to lecture on theology, rapidly acquiring 


the highest reputation. In 1263 he is 
found at the Chapter of the Dominicans in 
London. In 1268 he was in Italy, lecturing 
in Rome, Bologna, and elsewhere. In 1271 
he was again in Paris lecturing to the 
students; in 1272 professor at Naples. In 
1263 he had been offered the archbishopric 
of Naples by Clement IV., but refused the 
offer. He died on his way to Lyons to 
attend a general council for the purpose 
of uniting the Greek and Latin Churches. 
He was called, after the fashion of the times, 
the angelic doctor, and was canonized by 
John XXII. The most important of his 
numerous works, which were all written in 
Latin, is the Summa Theologiae, which, 
although only professing to treat of theology, 



Renaissance Arabesque. 


is in reality a complete and systematic sum¬ 
mary of the knowledge of the time. His 
disciples were known as Thomists. 

Aquita'nia, later Aquitaine, a Roman 
province in Gaul, which comprehended the 
countries on the coast from the Garonne to 
the Pyrenees, and from the sea to Toulouse. 
It was brought into connection with England 
by the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor, 
daughter of the last Duke of Aquitaine. 
The title to the province was for long dis¬ 
puted by England and France, but it was 
finally secured by the latter (1453). 

Arabah', a deep rocky valley or depression 
in north-western Arabia, between the Dead 
Sea and Gulf of Akabah, a sort of continua¬ 
tion of the Jordan valley. 

Arabesque (ar'a-besk), a species of orna¬ 
mentation for enriching flat surfaces, often 
consisting of fanciful figures, human or ani¬ 
mal, combined with floral forms. There 
may be said to be three periods and distinc¬ 
tive varieties of arabesque— (a) the Roman 
or Graeco-Roman, introduced into Rome 
from the East when pure art was declining; 
(b) the Arabesque of the Moors as seen in the 
Alhambra, introduced by them into Europe 
in the middle ages; (c) Modern Arabesque, 
w hich took its rise in Italy in the Renaiss- 

203 


ance period of art. The arabesques of the 
Moors, who are prohibited by their religion 
from representing animal forms, consist 
essentially of complicated ornamental de¬ 
signs based on the suggestion of plant- 
growth, combined with extremely complex 
geometrical forms. 

Arabgir (a-rab-ger'), or Arabkir', a town 
in Asiatic Turkey 147 miles w.s.w. of Erze- 
rum, noted for its manufacture of silk and 
cotton goods. Pop. 17,000. 

Ara'bi Pasha, Egyptian soldier and 
revolutionary leader, b. 1837. In Sept. 1881 
he headed a military revolt, and w r as for 
a time virtually dictator of Egypt. Bri¬ 
tain interfered, and after a short campaign, 
beginning with the bombardment of Alex¬ 
andria and ending with the defeat of Arabi 
and his army atTel-el-Kebir,hesurrendered, 
and was banished to Ceylon. 

Ara bia, a vast peninsula in the s.w. of 
Asia, bounded on the N. by the great Syro- 
Babylonian plain, n.e. by the Persian Gulf 
and the Sea of Oman, s. or s.e. by the Indian 
Ocean, and s.w. by the Red Sea and Gulf of 
Suez. Its length from N.W. to s.e. is about 
1800 miles, its mean breadth about 600 miles, 
its area rather over 1,00.0,000 sq. m., its pop. 
probably not more than 5,000,000. Roughly 











ARABIA. 


described, it exhibits a central table-land 
surrounded by a series of deserts, with 
numerous scattered oases, w r hile around 
this is a line of mountains parallel to and 
approaching the coasts, and with a narrow 
rim of low grounds (tehdma) between them 
and the sea. In its general features Arabia 
resembles the Sahara, of which it may be 
considered a continuation. Like the •'■'ahara 
it has its wastes of loose sand, its stretches 
of bare rocks and stones, its mountains de¬ 
void of vegetation, its oases with their wells 
and streams, their palm-groves and culti¬ 
vated fields — islands of green amidst the 
surrounding desolation. Rivers proper there 
are none. By the ancients the whole 
peninsula was broadly divided into three 
great sections—Arabia Petreea (containing 
the city Petra), Deserta (desert), and Felix 
(happy). The first and last of these answer 
roughly to the modern divisions of the region 
of Sinai in the N.w. and Yemen in the s.w., 
while the name Deserta was vaguely given 
to the rest of the country. The principal 
divisions at the present are Madian in the 
north-west; south of this, Hejaz, Assir, and 
Yemen, all on the Red Sea, the last named 
occupying the south-western part of the 
peninsula, and comprising a teharna or mari¬ 
time lowland on the shores of the Red Sea, 
with an elevated inland district of consider¬ 
able breadth; Hadramaut, on the south 
coast; Oman occupying the south-east angle; 
El-Hasa and Koveit on the Persian Gulf; 
El-Hamad (Desert of Syria), Nefhd, and 
Jebel Shammarin the north; Nejd, the Cen¬ 
tral Highlands, which occupies a great part 
of the interior of the country, while south of 
it is the great unexplored Dahkna or sandy 
desert. Madian belongs to Egypt, the 
Hejaz, Yemen, Bahr-el-Hasa, Koveit, &c., 
are more or less under the suzerainty of 
Turkey. The rest of the country is ruled 
by independent chiefs—sheikhs, emirs, and 
imams—while the title of sultan has been 
assumed by the chief of the Wahabis in 
Nejd, the sovereign of Oman (who has a 
subvention from the Indian government), 
and some petty princes in the south of the 
peninsula. The chief towns are Mecca, the 
birthplace of Mohammed; Medina, the 
place to which he fled from Mecca (a.d. 
622), and where he is buried; Mocha, a sea¬ 
port celebrated for its coffee; Aden, on the 
s.w. coast, a strongly fortified garrison be¬ 
longing to Britain; Sana, the capital of 
Yemen; and Muscat, the capital of Oman, 
a busy port with a safe anchorage. The 


chief towns of the interior are Hail, the 
residence of the emir of Northern Nejd; 
Oneizah, under the same ruler; and Riad, 
capital of Southern Nejd. The most flour¬ 
ishing portions of Arabia are in Oman, 
Hadramaut, and Nejd. In the two former 
are localities with numerous towns and vil¬ 
lages and settled industrious populations 
like that of Hindustan or Europe. 

The climate of Arabia in general is 
marked by extreme heat and dryness. 
Aridity and barrenness characterize both 
high and low grounds, and the date-palm is 
often the only representative of vegetable 
existence. There are districts which in the 
course of the year are hardly refreshed by 
a single shower of rain. Forests there are 
few or none. Grassy pastures have their 
place supplied by steppe-like tracts, which 
are covered for a short season with aro¬ 
matic herbs, serving as food for the cattle. 
The date-palm furnishes the staple article 
of food; the cereals are wheat, barley, maize, 
and millet; vai'ious sorts of fruit flourish; 
coffee and many aromatic plants and sub¬ 
stances, such as gum-arabic, benzoin, mastic, 
balsam, aloes, myrrh, frankincense, &c., are 
produced. There are also cultivated in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the peninsula, according to 
the soil and climate, beans, rice, lentils, 
tobacco, melons, saffron, colocynth, poppies, 
olives, &c. Sheep, goats, oxen, the horse, 
the camel, ass, and mule supply man’s 
domestic and personal wants. Among wild 
animals are gazelles, ostriches, the lion, pan¬ 
ther, hyena, jackal, &c. Among mineral 
products are saltpetre, mineral pitch, petro¬ 
leum, salt, sulphur, and several precious 
stones, as the carnelian, agate, and onyx. 

The Arabs, as a race, are of middle stature, 
of a powerful though slender build, and have 
a skin of a more or less brownish colour; in 
towns and the uplands often almost white. 
Their features are well cut, the nose straight, 
the forehead high. They are naturally ac¬ 
tive, intelligent, and courteous; and their 
character is marked by temperance, bravery, 
and hospitality. The first religion of the 
Arabs, the worship of the stars, was sup¬ 
planted by the doctrines of Mohammedanism, 
which succeeded rapidly in establishing itself 
throughout Arabia. Besides the two prin¬ 
cipal sects of Islam, the Sunnites and the 
Shiites, there also exists, in considerable 
numbers, a third Mohammedan sect, the 
Wahabis, which arose in the latter half of 
the eighteenth century, and for a time pos¬ 
sessed great political importance in the 

204 


Arabia. 


peninsula. The mode of life of the Arabs 
is either nomadic or settled. The nomadic 
tribes are termed Bedouins for Bedawins), 
and among them are considered to be the 
Arabs of the purest blood. Commerce is 
largely in the hands of foreigners, among 
whom the Jews and Banians (Indian mer¬ 
chants) are the most numerous. 

The history of the Arabs previous to 
Mohammed is obscure. The earliest inhab¬ 


itants are believed to have been of the Se¬ 
mitic race. Jews in great numbers migrated 
into Arabia after the destruction of Jerusa¬ 
lem, and, making numerous proselytes, in¬ 
directly favoured the introduction of the 
doctrines of Mohammed. With his advent 
the Arabians uprose and united for the 
purpose of extending the new creed; and 
under the caliphs—the successors of Mo¬ 
hammed—they attained great power, and 



Bedouin Arabs. 

1, 2, Of the J ordan. 3, Of the II a Aran. 4, 5, Of the Desert—Arabia Petrsea. 


founded large and powerful kingdoms in 
three continents. (See Caliphs.) On the 
fall of the caliphate of Bagdad in 1258 
the decline set in, and on the expulsion of 
the Moors from Spain the foreign rule of 
the Arabs came to an end. In the sixteenth 
century Turkey subjected Hejaz and Yemen, 
and received the nominal submission of the 
tribes inhabiting the rest of Arabia. The 
subjection of Hejaz has continued down to 
the present day; but Yemen achieved its 
independence in the seventeenth century, 
and maintained it till 1871, when the terri¬ 
tory again fell into the hands of the Turks. 
In 1839 Aden was occupied by the Bi’itish. 
Oman early became virtually independent of 
the caliphs, and grew into a well-organized 
kingdom. In 1507 its capital, Maskat or 
Muscat, was occupied by the Portuguese, 
who were not driven out till 1659. The 

205 


Wahabis appeared towards the end of the 
eighteenth century, and took an important 
part in the political affairs of Arabia, but 
their progress was interrupted by Mohammed 
Ali, pasha of Egypt, and they suffered a 
complete defeat by Ibrahim Pasha. He 
extended his power over most of the coun¬ 
try, but the events of 1840 in Syria com¬ 
pelled him to renounce all claims to Arabia. 
The Hejaz thus again became subject to 
Turkish sway. Turkey has since extended 
its rule not only over Y r emen, but also over 
the district of El-Hasa on the Persian Gulf. 

Arabian Language and Literature .—The 
Arabic language belongs to the Semitic dia¬ 
lects, among which it is distinguished for 
its richness, softness, and high degree of de¬ 
velopment. By the spread of Islam it became 
the sole written language and the prevailing 
speech in all south-western Asia and eastern 































ARABIA-ARABIAN NIGHTS. 


and northern Africa, and for a time in south¬ 
ern Spain, in Malta, and in Sicily; and it is 
still used as a learned and sacred language 
wherever Islam is spread. Almost a third part 
of the Persian vocabulary consists of Arabic 
words, and there is the same proportion of 
Arabic in Turkish. The Arabic language 
is written in an alphabet of its own, which 
has also been adopted in writing Persian, 
Hindustani, Turkish, &c. As in all Semitic 
languages (except the Ethiopic), it is read 
from right to left. The vowels are usually 
omitted in Arabic manuscripts, only the 
consonants being written. 

Poetry among the Arabs had a very early 
development, and before the time of Mo¬ 
hammed poetical contests were held and 
prizes awarded for the best pieces. The 
collection called the Moallalcat contains 
seven pre-Mohammedan poems by seven 
authors. Many other poems belonging to 
the time before Mohammed, some of equal 
age with those of the Moallakat, are also 
preserved in collections. Mohammed gave 
a new direction to Arab literature. The 
rules of faith and life which he laid down 
were collected by Abu-Bekr, first caliph after 
his death, and published by Othman, the 
third caliph, and constitute the Koran —the 
Mohammedan Bible. The progress of the 
Arabs in literature, the arts and sciences, 
may be said to have begun with the govern¬ 
ment of the caliphs of the family of the 
Abbassides, a.d. 749, at Bagdad, several of 
whom, as Harunal Rashid and A1 Mamun, 
were munificent patrons of learning: and 
their example was followed by the Ommiades 
in Spain. In Spain were established numer¬ 
ous academies and schools, which were 
visited by students from other European 
countries; and important works were 
written on geography, history, philosophy, 
medicine, physics, mathematics, arithmetic, 
geometry, and astronomy. Most of the 
geography in the middle ages is the work of 
the Arabians, and their historians since the 
eighth century have been very numerous. 
The philosophy of the Arabians was of 
Greek origin, and derived principally from 
that of Aristotle. Numerous translations 
of the scientific works of Aristotle and other 
Greek philosophers were made principally 
by Christian scholars who resided as physi¬ 
cians at the courts of the caliphs. These 
were diligently studied in Bagdad, Damas¬ 
cus, and Cordova, and, being translated into 
Latin, became known in the west of Europe. 
Of their philosophical authors the most cele¬ 


brated are Alfarabi (tenth century), Ibn 
Sina or Avicenna (died a.d. 1037), Alg- 
hazzali (died 1111), Ibn Roshd or Averroes 
(twelfth century), called by pre-eminence 
The Commentator, &c. In medicine they 
excelled all other nations in the middle ages, 
and they are commonly regarded as the 
earliest experimenters in chemistry. Their 
mathematics and astronomy were based on 
the works of Greek writers, but the former 
they enriched, simplified, and extended. It 
was by them that algebra (a name of Arabic 
origin) was introduced to the western peoples, 
and the Arabic numerals were similarly in¬ 
troduced. Astronomy they especially culti¬ 
vated, for which famous schools and observa¬ 
tories were erected at Bagdad and Cordova. 
The Almagest of Ptolemy in an Arabic trans¬ 
lation was early a text-book among them. 
Alongside of science poetry continued to be 
cultivated, but after the ninth or tenth 
centuries it grew more and more artificial. 
Among poets were Abu Nowas, Asmai, Abu 
Tern mam, Motenabbi, Abul-Ala, Busiri, 
Tograi, and Hariri. Tales and romances 
in prose and verse were written. The tales 
of fairies, genii, enchanters, and sorcerers 
in particular, passed from the Arabians to 
the western nations, as in The Thousand 
and One Nights Some of the books most 
widely read in the middle ages, such as The 
Seven Wise Masters and the Fables of Pil- 
pay or Bidpai, found their way into Europe 
through the instrumentality of the Arabs. 
At the present day Arabic literature is 
almost confined to the production of com¬ 
mentaries and scholia, discussions on points 
of dogma and jurisprudence, and gramma¬ 
tical works on the classical language. There 
are a few newspapers published in Arabic. 

Arabian Architecture. See Moorish 
Architecture , Saracenic Architecture. 

Arabian Gulf. See Red Sea. 

Arabian Nights; or The Thousand and 
One Nights, a celebrated collection of 
Eastern tales, long current in the East, and 
supposed to have been derived by the Ara¬ 
bians from India, through the medium of 
Persia. They were first introduced into 
Europe in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century by means of the French translation 
of Antoine Galland. Of some of them no 
original MS. is known to exist; they were 
taken down by Galland from the oral com¬ 
munication of a Syrian friend. The story 
which connects the tales of the Thousand 
and One Nights is as follows:—The Sultan 
Shahriyar, exasperated by the faithlessness 

206 



ARAFAT. 


ARABIAN SEA 


of his bride, made a law that every one of 
his future wives should be put to death the 
morning after marriage. At length one of 
them, Shahrazad, the generous daughter 
of the grand-vizier, succeeded in abolishing 
the cruel custom. By the charm of her 
stories the fair narrator induced the sultan 
to defer her execution every day till the 
dawn of another, by breaking off in the 
middle of an interesting tale which she had 
begun to relate. In the form we possess 
them these tales belong to a comparatively 
late period, though the exact date of their 
composition is not known. Lane, who pub¬ 
lished a translation of a number of the 
tales, with valuable notes, is of opinion that 
they took their present form some time be¬ 
tween 1475 and 1525. Two complete Eng¬ 
lish translations have recently been printed, 
giving many passages that previous trans¬ 
lators had omitted on the score of morality 
or decency. 

Arabian Sea, the part of the Indian 
Ocean between Arabia and India. 

Arabic Figures, the characters 1, 2, 3, 4, 
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0; of Indian origin, introduced 
into Europe by the Moors. They did not 
come into general use till after the inven¬ 
tion of printing. 

Arable Land, land which is wholly or 
chiefly cultivated by the plough, as distin¬ 
guished from grass-land, wood land, common 
pasture, and waste. 

Aracacha, or Arracacha (ar-a-ka'cha), a 
genus of umbelliferous plants of Southern 
and Central America. The root of A. escu- 
lenta is divided into several lobes, each of 
■which is about the size of a large carrot. 
These are boiled like potatoes and largely 
eaten in South America. 

Aracan (ar-a-kan'), the most northern 
division of Low r er Burmah, on the Bay of 
Bengal; area, 14,526 sq. miles; pop. 587,518. 
Ceded to the English in 1826, as a result of 
the first Burmese war. 

Aracari (a-ra-sare), native name of a 
genus of brilliant birds ( Pteroglossus) closely 
allied to the toucans, but generally smaller; 
natives of the warm parts of S. America. 

Aracati (a-ra-ka-te'), a Brazilian river- 
port, prov. of Ceara, on the river Jaguaribe, 
about 10 miles from its mouth. Exports 
hides and cotton. Pop. about 6000, 

Ara'cese, a natural order of mon ocotyle- 
donous plants, mostly tropical, having the 
genus Arum as the type. Most of the spe¬ 
cies have tuberous roots abounding in starch, 
which forms a wholesome food after the acrid 

207 


(and even poisonous) juice has been washed 
out. See Arum, Caladium, Dumb-cane. 

Arachis (ar'a-kis), a genus of leguminous 
plants much cultivated in warm climates, 
and esteemed a valuable article of food. 
The most remarkable feature of the genus 
is that when the flower falls the stalk sup¬ 
porting the small undeveloped fruit length¬ 
ens, and bending towards the ground pushes 
the fruit into the ground, when it begins to 
enlarge and ripen. The pod of A. hypogcea 
(popularly called ground, earth, or pea nut) 
is of a pale yellow colour, and contains two 
seeds the size of a hazel-nut, in flavour sweet 
as almonds, and yielding when pressed an 
excellent oil. 

Arachnida (a-rak'ni-da; Greek, arachne, 
a spider), a class of Arthropoda or higher 
Annulose animals, including the Spiders, 
Scorpions, Mites, Ticks, &c. They have 
the body divided into a number of segments 
or somites, some of which have always arti¬ 
culated appendages (limbs, &c.). There is 
often a pair of nervous ganglia in each so¬ 
mite, although in some forms (as spiders) 
the nervous system becomes modified and 
concentrated. They are oviparous and 
somewhat resemble insects, but they have a 
united head and thorax, and do not undergo 
a metamorphosis similar to insects. They 
respire by tracheae, or by pulmonary sacs, 
or by the skin. 

Ar'ack, Ar'rack, a spirituous liquor 
manufactured in the East Indies from a 
great variety of substances. It is often 
distilled from fermented rice, or it may be 
distilled from the juice of the cocoa-nut 
and other palms. Bure arack is clear and 
transparent, with a yellowish or straw co¬ 
lour, and a peculiar but agreeable taste 
and smell; it contains at least 52 to 54 per 
cent of alcohol. 

Arad (o'rod), a town of Hungary, on the 
Maros, 30 miles north of Temeswar, divided 
by the river into O (Old) Arad and Uj 
(New) Arad, connected by a bridge; it has 
a fortress, and is an important railway 
centre, with a large trade and manufac¬ 
tures. Pop., Old Arad, 35,556; New Arad, 
5141. 

Ar'adus (now Ruad), an islet about a 
mile in circumference lying 2 miles off the 
Syrian coast, 35 miles N. of Tripoli; the site 
of the Phoenician stronghold Arvad, a city 
second only to Tyre and Sidon; now occu¬ 
pied by about 3000 people, mainly fishermen. 

Arafat', or Jebel er Rahmeh (‘Mountain 
of Mercy’), a hill in Arabia, about 200 feet 



ARAGO - 

high, with stone steps reaching to the sum¬ 
mit, 15 miles south-east of Mecca; one of 
the principal objects of pilgrimage among 
Mohammedans, who say that it was the 
place where Adam first received his wife 
Eve after they had been expelled from 
Paradise and separated from each other 120 
years. A sermon delivered on the mount 
constitutes the main ceremony of the Hadj 
or pilgrimage to Mecca, and entitles the 
hearer to the name and privileges of a Hadji 
or pilgrim. 

Ar'ago, Dominique Franqois, a French 
physicist, born in 1786; died at Paris in 
1853. After studying in the Polytechnic 
School at Paris, he was appointed a secretary 
of the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1806 he 
was associated with Biot in completing in 
Spain the measurements of Delambre and 
Mechain to obtain an arc of the meridian. 
Before he got back to France he had been 
shipwrecked and narrowly escaped being 
enslaved at Algiers. In 1809 he was 
elected to the Academy of Sciences, and 
appointed a professor of the Polytechnic 
School. He distinguished himself by his 
researches in the polarization of light, gal¬ 
vanism, magnetism, astronomy, &c. His 
discovery of the magnetic properties of sub¬ 
stances devoid of iron, made known to the 
Academy of Sciences in 1824, procured him 
the Copley medal of the Royal Society of 
London in 1825. A further consideration 
of the same subject led to the equally 
remarkable discovery of the production of 
magnetism by electricity. He took part in 
the revolution of 1848, and held the office 
of minister of war and marine in the pro¬ 
visional government. At the coup d'etat 
of Dec. 1852, he refused to take the oath to 
the government of Louis Napoleon, but the 
oath was not pressed. His works, which 
were posthumously collected and published, 
consist, besides his Astronomie Populaire, 
chiefly of contributions to learned societies, 
and biographical notices ( elopes ) of deceased 
members of the Academy of Sciences. 

Arago, Emmanuel, son of Dominique 
Francis, French advocate and politician, 
was born at Paris in 1812; called to the bar 
1837; took part in the revolution of 1848; 
renounced politics after the coup d’etat of 
Dec. 1852, but continued to practise at the 
bar. After the fall of the empire he again 
took a prominent part in public affairs, and 
held several important offices. He is author 
of a volume of poems and many theatrical 
pieces. 


-ARAL! A. 

Arago, Etienne, brother of Dominique 
Arago, was born in 1802. He founded the 
journals La Reforme and Le Figaro; was 
director of the Theatre du Vaudeville, 1829; 
took part in the revolution of 1848; was 
condemned to transportation, 1849; fled from 
France, but returned in 1859; was mayor of 
Paris during the German war, and appointed 
archivist to the Rcole des Beaux Arts, 1878. 
He is author of upwards of 100 dramas; La 
Vie de Molifere; Les Bleus et les Blancs, 
and other works. 

Aragon', Kingdom or, a former province 
or kingdom of Spain, now divided into the 
three provinces of Teruel, Huesca, and Sa¬ 
ragossa; bounded on the N. by the Pyre¬ 
nees, N.w. by Navarre, w. by Castile, s. by 
Valencia, and e. by Catalonia; length about 
190 miles, average breadth 90 miles; area, 
14,726 sq. miles. It was governed by its 
own monarchs until the union with Castile 
on the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella 
(1469). Pop. 909,261. 

Arago'na, a town in Sicily, 8 miles n.n.e. 
of Girgenti. Pop. 7947. In the neigh¬ 
bourhood is the mud volcano of Macculuba. 

Araguaya (a-ra-gwi'a), a Brazilian river, 
principal affluent of the Tocantins; rises 
about the 18th degree of s. lat.; in its 
course northwards forms the boundary be¬ 
tween the provinces of Matto Grosso and 
Goyaz, and falls into the Tocantins near lat. 
6" s.; length, about 1300 miles, of which 
over 1000 are navigable. 

A'ral, a salt-water lake in Asia, in Rus¬ 
sian territory, about 150 miles w. of the 
Caspian Sea, between 43° 42' and 46° 44' 
N. lat., and 58° 18' and 61° 46' e. Ion.; 
length 270 miles, breadth 165; area, 26,650 
sq. miles (or not much smaller than Scot¬ 
land). It stands 240 feet above the level 
of the Caspian, and 160 feet above the 
Mediterranean. It receives the Amoo Da¬ 
ria or Oxus and the Sir Daria or Jaxartes, 
and contains a multitude of sturgeon and 
other fish. It is encircled by desert sandy 
tracts, and its shores are without harbours. 
It has no outlet. The Aral contains a large 
number of small islands; steamers have been 
placed on it by the Russians. 

Ara'lia, a genus of plants with small 
flowers arranged in umbels and succulent 
berries, the type of the nat. order Araliaceae, 
which is nearly related to the Umbelliferse, 
but the species are of a more shrubby habit. 
They are natives chiefly of tropical or sub¬ 
tropical countries, and in Britain are repre¬ 
sented by the ivy; ginseng belongs to the 

208 



ARAM-ARAS. 


order. From the pith of A . papyrifera is 
obtained the Chinese rice-paper. 

A'ram, Eugene, a self-taught scholar 
whose unhappy fate has been made the 
subject of a ballad by Hood and a romance 
by Lord Lytton, was born in Yorkshire, 
1704, executed for murder, 1759. In 1734 
he set up a school at Knaresborough. 
About 1745 a shoemaker of that place, 
named Daniel Clarke, was suddenly miss¬ 
ing under suspicious circumstances; and no 
light was thrown on the matter till full thir¬ 
teen years afterwards, when an expression 
dropped by one Richard Houseman respect¬ 
ing the discovery of a skeleton supposed to 
be Clarke’s, caused him to be taken into 
custody. From his confession an order was 
issued for the apprehension of Aram, who 
had long quitted Yorkshire, and was at the 
time acting as usher at the grammar-school 
at Lynn. He was brought to trial on the 
3d of August, 1759, at York, where, not¬ 
withstanding an able and eloquent defence 
which he made before the court, he was 
convicted of the murder of Clarke, and sen¬ 
tenced to death. He was among the first 
to recognize the affinity of the Celtic to the 
other European languages, and under fa¬ 
vourable circumstances might have done 
some valuable work in philological science. 

Aramse'an, or Aramaic, a Semitic lan¬ 
guage nearly allied to the Hebrew and 
Phoenician, anciently spoken in Syria and 
Palestine and eastwards to the Euphrates 
and Tigris, being the official language of 
this region under the Persian domination. 
In Palestine it supplanted Hebrew, and it 
was it and not the latter that was the tongue 
of the Jews in the time of Christ. Parts of 
Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic, or, 
as this form of it is often incorrectly named, 
Chaldee, from an old notion that the Jews 
brought from Babylon. An important Ara¬ 
maic dialect is the Syriac, in which there 
is an extensive Christian literature. See 
Chaldee , Syriac. 

Ar 'an, an island lying off the w\ coast of 
Donegal, Ireland, has an area of 4335 acres, 
a lighthouse, and a pop. of 1163, chiefly en¬ 
gaged in fishing.—Also called North Island 
of A ran, or A rramnore. 

Arane'idae, the spider family. 

Aran Islands, or South Islands of 
Aran, three islands at the mouth of Gal¬ 
way Bay, off the w. coast of Ireland. The 
largest, Aranmore or Inishmore, comprises 
7635 acres, and has a pop. of 2122; the 
next, Inishmaan, 2252 acres, pop. 443; and 
VOL. i. 209 


the least, Inishere, 1400 acres, pop. 493. 
They are remarkable for a number of archi¬ 
tectural remains of a very early date. The 
inhabitants chiefly engaged in agriculture 
and fishing. 

Aranjuez (a-ran-Au-eth'), a small town 
and palace in Spain, 30 miles from Madrid, 
with splendid gardens laid out by Philip II. 
The court used to reside here from Easter 
till the close of June, when the number of 
people increased from 4000 to about 20,000. 

Arany (o-ron'y), Janos, Hungai-ian poet, 
born 1819, died 1882. He was for some time 
a strolling player, but became professor of 
Latin at the Normal School of Szalonta, 
professor of Hungarian literature at Nagy 
Koros, and secretary of the Hungarian 
Academy. Author of The Lost Constitu¬ 
tion; Katalin ; and a series of three con¬ 
nected narrative poem's on the fortunes of 
Toldi, the Samson of Hungarian folk-lore; 
&c. 

Arap'ahoes, a tribe of Amei’ican Indians 
located near the head-waters of the Arkan¬ 
sas and Platte rivers, not now of any im¬ 
portance. 

Arapaima (a-ra-pl'ma), a genus of South 
American fresh-water fishes, order Physos- 
tomi, family Osteoglossidse, on-e species of 
which (A. gigas) grows to the length of 15 
or 16 feet, and forms a valuable article of 
food in Brazil and Guiana. It is covered 
with large bony scales, and has a hare and 
bony head. 

Ararat, a celebrated mountain in Arme¬ 
nia, forming the point of contact of Russia 
with Turkey and Persia; an isolated volca¬ 
nic mass showing two separate cones known 
as the Great and Little Ararat, resting on 
a common base and separated by a deep 
intervening depression. The elevations are: 
Great Ararat, 16,916 feet; Little Ararat, 
12,840 feet; the connecting ridge, 8780 feet. 
Vegetation extends to 14,200 feet, which 
marks the snow-line. According to tradi¬ 
tion Mount Ararat was the resting-place of 
the ark when the waters of the flood abated. 

Araro'ba, Arraroba, the powdered bark 
of Andira araroba. See Andira. 

A'ras (the ancient A raxes), a river of Ar¬ 
menia, rising s. of Erzerum at the foot of 
the Bingol-dagh; it flows for some miles 
through Turkish territory north-east to the 
new Russian frontier. Here it turns east¬ 
wards to the Erivan plain N. of Ararat, 
whence it sweeps in a semicircle mostly 
between the Russian and Persian territories 
round to its confluence with the Ivur, 60 

14 



ARATUS- 

miles from its mouth in the Caspian; length, 
500 miles. 

Ara'tus, a Greek poet, born at Soli in 
Cilicia; flourished about 270 b.c., was a 
favourite of Ptolemy Philadelphus. His 
poem Phsenomena is a version of a prose 
work on astronomy by Eudoxus ; one verse 
of it is quoted by St. Paul in his address to 
the Athenians (Acts xvii. 28). 

Ara'tus of Sicyon, a statesman of ancient 
Greece, born 272 b.c. In 251 b.c. he over¬ 
threw the tyrant of Sicyon and joined it to 
the Achaean League, which he greatly ex¬ 
tended. He accepted the aid of Antigonus 
Doson, king of Macedon, against the Spar¬ 
tans, and became in time little more than 
the adviser of the Macedonian king, who 
had now made the League dependent on 
himself. He is said to have been poisoned 
by Philip V. of Macedon, 213 B.c. 

Arauca'nians, a South American native 
race in the southern part of Chili, occupying 
a territory stretching from about 37° to 40° 
of 8. lat. They are warlike and more civi¬ 
lized than many of the native races of S. 
America, and maintained almost unceasing 
war with the Spaniards from 1537 to 1773, 
when their independence was recognized by 
Spain, though their territory was much 
curtailed. Their early contests with the 
Spaniards were celebrated in Ercilla’s Span¬ 
ish poem Araucana. With the republic of 
Chili they were long at feud, and latterly 
had at their head a French adventurer 
named Tonneins, who claimed the title of 
king. In 1882 they submitted to Chili. 
The Chilian province of Arauco receives its 
name from them. 

Arauca'ria, a genus of trees of the coni¬ 
ferous or pine order, belonging to the south¬ 
ern hemisphere. The species are large 
evergreen trees with pretty large, stiff, flat¬ 
tened, and generally imbricated leaves, ver- 
ticillate spreading branches, and bearing 
large cones, each scale having a single large 
seed. The species best known in Britain is 
A. imbricdta (the Chili pine or puzzle-mon¬ 
key), which is quite hardy. It is a native 
of the mountains of southern Chili, where 

it forms vast forests and vields a hard dur- 

«/ 

able wood. Its seeds are eaten when roasted. 
The Moreton Bay pine of N. S. Wales ( A. 
Cunninghamii) supplies a valuable timber 
used in house and boat building, in making 
furniture, and in other carpenter work. A 
species, A. excelsa, or Norfo k Island pine 
abounds in several of the South Sea Islands, 
where it attains a height of 220 feet with a 


- ARBLAY. 

circumference of 30 feet, and is described 
as one of the most beautiful of trees. Its 
foliage is light and graceful, and quite un¬ 
like that of A. imbricata, having nothing of 
of its stiff formality. Its timber is of some 
value, being white, tough, and close-grained. 

Arau'co, a prov. of Chili, named from the 
Araucanian Indians; area, 4246 sq. miles; 
pop. 73,658; capital, Lebu. 

Araval'li Hills, a range of Indian moun¬ 
tains running n.e. and s.w. across the Raj- 
putana country, which they separate into 
two natui’al divisions—desert plains on the 
N.w. and fertile lands on the s.E. ; highest 
point, Mount Abu (5653 feet). 

Araxes. See Aras. 

Ar'baces, one of the generals of Sardana- 
palus, king of Assyria. He revolted and 
defeated his master, and became the founder 
of the Median empire in 846 B.C. 

Ar'balist, a cross-bow. 

Arbe'la (now Erbil ), a place in the Turk¬ 
ish vilayet of Bagdad, giving name to the 
decisive battle fought by Alexander the 
Great against Darius, at Gaugamela, about 
20 miles distant from it, October 1, B.c. 331. 

Arbitrage (arRi-trazh), same as arbitra¬ 
tion of exchanges. See next article. Ar¬ 
bitrageur (ar'bi-tra-zheur) is one who makes 
calculations of currency exchanges. 

Arbitration, the hearing and determina¬ 
tion of a cause between parties in contro¬ 
versy, by a person or persons chosen by the 
parties. This may be done by one person, 
but it is common to choose more than one. 
Frequently two are nominated, one by each 
party, with a third, the umpire (or, in Scot¬ 
land, sometimes the oversman), who is called 
on to decide in case of the primary arbitra¬ 
tors differing. In such a case the umpire 
may be agreed upon either by the parties 
themselves, or by the arbitrators, when they 
have received authority from the parties to 
the dispute to settle this point. The deter¬ 
mination of arbitrators is called an award. 
It has the effect of a judgment, subject to 
appeal, which may be entered at any time 
within twenty days from the filing of such 
award.— Arbitration of exchanges, an ope¬ 
ration or calculation by which the currency 
of one country is converted into that of 
another through the medium of intervening 
currencies, for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether direct or indirect drafts and remit¬ 
tances are preferable. 

Ar'blast, a cross-bow. 

Ar'blay, Madame d’, originally Miss 
Frances Burney, born in 1752 at Lyno- 

210 



ARBOGA■ 

Regis in Norfolk, died at Bath 1840. She 
was the second daughter of Dr. Burney, 
author of the History of Music. In 1786 
she was appointed one of the keepers of the 
robes to Queen Charlotte; in 1793 married 
the Count D’Arblay, a French emigrant 
artillery officer, with whom she afterwards 
went to France, and who, on the restora¬ 
tion of the Bourbons, attained the rank of 
general. She gained considerable celebrity 
by her literary productions. These were 
mostly novels, of which she produced four 
—Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, and the Wan¬ 
derer. She published the memoirs of her 
father, which appeared in 1832, and her 
Diary, edited by her niece, was also pub¬ 
lished. 

Arbor Day, a day designated by legisla¬ 
tive enactment, in the different States, for 
the voluntary planting of trees by the peo¬ 
ple; the pupils in the public schools now 
take part in the observance of the day. It 
was inaugurated in 1874 by the Nebraska 
State Board of Agriculture. Thirty-seven 
States have already established an annual 
Arbor Day, and observe it as a legal holi¬ 
day. 

Arbore'tum (Lat. arbor, a tree), a place 
in which a collection of different trees and 
shrubs is cultivated for scientific or educa¬ 
tional purposes. 

Ar'boriculture includes the culture of 
trees and shrubs, as well as all that pertains 
to the preparation of the soil, the sowing of 
the seeds, and the treatment of the plants 
in their young state, the preparation of the 
land previous to their final transplantation, 
their just adaptation to soil and situation, 
their relative growth and progress to ma¬ 
turity, their management during growth, 
and the proper season and period for felling 
them. 

Arbor Vitse (lit. ‘tree of life’), the name 
of several coniferous trees of the genus 
Thuja, allied to the cypress, with flattened 
branchlets, and small imbricated or scale¬ 
like leaves. The common Arbor Vitae 
(Thuja occidental™) is a native of North 
America, where it grows to the height of 
40 or 50 feet. The young twigs have an 
agreeable balsamic smell. The Chinese 
Arbor Vitae ( Thuja oriental™ ), common in 
Britain, yields a resin which was formerly 
thought to have medicinal virtues. 

Arbroath (ar-broth'), or Aberbrothock, 
a royal and parliamentary burgh and sea¬ 
port in the county of Forfar, Scotland, at 
the mouth of the small river Brothock. Its 

211 


— AR(JA. 

ancient abbey, founded by William the 
Lion in 1178, and dedicated to Saints Mary 
and Thomas a Becket, is now a picturesque 
ruin. There are numerous flax and hemp 
spinning-mills and factories, and much can¬ 
vas and linen is made; also tanning, shoe¬ 
making, and fishing, and a small shipping 
trade, but the harbour is bad. Pop. 22,960. 
It unites with Montrose, Forfar, Brechin, 
and Bervie (the Montrose burghs) in send¬ 
ing a member to parliament. 

Arbuth'not, John, an eminent physician 
and distinguished wit, born at Arbuthnot, 
Kincardineshire, Scotland, 1667; died 1735. 
He received the degree of Doctor of Medi¬ 
cine at the University of St. Andrews; and 
went to London, where he soon distinguished 
himself by his writings and by his skill in 
his profession. In 1704 he was chosen fel¬ 
low of the Royal Society, and soon after he 
was appointed physician extraordinary, and 
then physician in ordinary to Queen Anne. 
About this time he became intimate with 
Swift, Pope, Gay, and other wits of the 
day. His writings, other than professional 
or scientific, include his contributions (in 
conjunction with Swdft and Pope) to the Me¬ 
moirs of Martinus Scriblerus, History of 
John Bull, Art of Political Lying, &c. He 
was conspicuous not only for learning and 
wit, but also for worth and humanity. 

Ar'butus, a genus of plants belonging to 
the Ericaceae, or heath order, and compris¬ 
ing a number of small trees and shrubs, 
natives chiefly of Europe and N. America. 
ArbUtus Vnedo abounds near the lakes of 
Killarney, where its fine foliage adds charms 
to the scenery'. The bright red or yellow 
berries, somewhat like the strawberry, have 
an unpleasant taste and narcotic properties. 
The Corsicans make wine from them. The 
trailing arbutusormay-flowerof N. America, 
a plant with fragrant and beautiful blos¬ 
soms, is Epigaa repens , of the same nat. 
order. 

Arc, a portion of a curve line, especially 
of a circle. It is by means of circular arcs 
that all angles are measured.— Electric or 
Voltaic arc, the luminous arch of intense 
brightness and excessively high tempera¬ 
ture wffiich is formed by an electric current 
in crossing over the interval of space be¬ 
tween the carbon points of an electric lamp. 
See Arc-light. 

Arc, Jeanne d\ See Joan of Arc. 

Ar'ca, a genus of bivalve molluscs, family 
Arcadse, wffiose shells are known as ark- 
shells. 



ARCACHON-ARCH. 


Arcachon (ar-ka-sh<3n), a town of S.W. 
France, dep. Gironde, on the almost land¬ 
locked basin of Arcachon, a much-frequented 
bathing-place, with great oyster-rearing 
establishments. The town stretches along 
the shore, and is sheltered by sand-hills 
and pine-woods. It is connected by railway 
with Bordeaux. Pop. 7000. 

Arcade, a series of arches supported on 
piers or pillars, used generally as a screen 



Arcade—Portico of S. Maria delle Grazie, near Arezzo. 


and support of a roof, or of the wall of a build¬ 
ing, and having beneath the covered part 
an ambulatory as round a cloister, or a foot¬ 
path with shops or dwellings, as frequently 
seen in old Italian towns. Sometimes a porch 
or other prominent part of an important 



Arcade, Hornsey Church, Hampshire. 


building is treated with arcades, as in the 
illustration. At the present day Bologna, 
Padua, and Berne have fine examples of 
mediaeval arcaded streets, and among more 
modern work various streets in Turin and 
the Rue de Pivoli, Paris, are lined with 
arcades, with shops underneath. In mediae¬ 


val architecture the term arcade is also ap¬ 
plied to a series of arches supported on 
pillars forming an ornamental dressing or 
enrichment of a w 7 all, a mode of treatment 
of very frequent occurrence in the towers, 
apses, and other parts of churches. In modern 
use the name arcade is often applied to a 
passage or narrow street containing shops 
arched over and covered with glass, as for 
exam pie the Burlington Arcade, London, and 
the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan. 

Arca'dia, the central and most mountain¬ 
ous portion of the Peloponnesus (Morea), 
the inhabitants of which in ancient times 
were celebrated for simplicity of character 
and manners. Their occupation was almost 
entirely pastoral, and thus the country 
came to be regarded as typical of rural 
simplicity and happiness. At the present 
day Arcadia forms a nomarchy of the King¬ 
dom of Greece. Area, 2028 sq. miles; pop. 
148,600. 

Arca'dius, born in 377, died 408; son of 
the Emperor r l heodosius, on whose death in 
395 the empire was divided, he obtaining 
the East, and his brother Honorius the 
West. He proved a feeble and pusillani¬ 
mous prince. 

Arcesilaus (ar-ses-i-la'us), a Greek philo¬ 
sopher, the founder of the second or middle 
academy, was born about 315 B.C., died 
239 B.C. He left no writings, and of his • 
opinions so little is known that it has been 
doubted whether he was a strict Platonist 
or a sceptic. 

Arch, a structure composed of separate 
pieces, such as stones or bricks, having the 



a, Abutments. i, Impost. p, Piers. 
v, Voussoirs or arch-stones. fc, Keystone. 

S, Springers. In. Intrados. Ex. Extrados. 

shape of truncated wedges, arranged on a 
curved line, so as to retain their position by 
mutual pressure. The separate stones which 
compose the curve of an arch are called 
voussoirs or arch-stones; the extreme or 

212 












































































































ARCH 


ARCHAEOLOGY. 


lowest voussoirs are termed springers, and 
the uppermost or central one is called the 
keystone. The under or concave side of the 
voussoirs is called the intrados, and the 



upper or convex side the extrados of the 
arch. The supports which afford resting 
and resisting points to the arch are called 
piers and abutments. The upper part of 
the pier or abutment where the arch rests 
—technically where it springs from —is the 



impost. The span of an arch is in circular 
arches the length of its chord, and gener¬ 
ally the width between the points of its 
opposite imposts whence it springs. The 
rise of an arch is the height of the highest 
point of its intrados above the line of the 



imposts; this point is sometimes called the 
under side of the crown, the highest point 
of the extrados being the crown. Arches 
are designated in various ways, as from 
their shape (circular, elliptic, &c.), or from 
the resemblance of the whole contour of the 



curve to some familar object (lancet arch, 
horse-shoe arch), or from the method used 
in describing the .curve, as equilateral, 
three-centred, four-centred, ogee, and the 

213 


like; or from the style of architecture to 
which they belong, as Roman, pointed, and 
Saracenic arches.— Triumphal arch , origi¬ 
nally a simple decorated arch under which 
a victorious Roman general and army 
passed in triumph. At a later period the 
triumphal arch was a richly sculptured, 
massive, and permanent structure, having 
an archway passing through it, with gener¬ 
ally a smaller arch on either side. The 
name is sometimes given to an arch, gener¬ 
ally of wood decorated with flowers or ever¬ 
greens, erected on occasion of some public 
rejoicing, &c. 

Archaean (ar-ke'an) Rocks (Gr. archaios, 
ancient), the oldest rocks of the earth’s crust, 
crystalline in character, and embracing gran¬ 
ite, syenite, gneiss,mica-schist, &c., all devoid 
of fossil remains. These rocks und rlie and 
are distinctly separate from the stratified 
and fossiliferous formations, which indeed 
have chiefly taken origin from them. 

Archseol'ogy (Gr. archaios, ancient, and 
logos, a discourse), the science which takes 
cognizance of the history of nations and 
peoples as evinced by the remains, archi¬ 
tectural, implemental, or otherwise, which 
belong to the earlier epoch of their exist¬ 
ence. In a more extended sense the term 
embraces every branch of knowledge which 
bears on the origin, religion, laws, language, 
science, arts, and literature of ancient 
peoples. It is to a great extent synony¬ 
mous with prehistoric annals, as a large if 
not the principal part of its field of study 
extends over those periods in the history of 
the human race in regard to which we pos¬ 
sess almost no information derivable from 
written records. Archaeology divides the 
primeval period of the human race, more 
especially as exhibited by remains found in 
Europe, into the stone, the bronze, and the 
iron age, these names being given in accor¬ 
dance with the materials employed for wea¬ 
pons, implements, &c., during the particular 
period. The stone age has been subdivided 
into the palceoiithic and neolithic, the former 
being that older period, in which the stone 
implements were not polished as they are 
in the latter and more recent period. r I he 
bronze age, which admits of a similar sub¬ 
division, is that in which implements were 
of copper or bronze. In this age the dead 
were burned and their ash s deposited in 
urns or stone chests, covered with conical 
mounds of earth or cairns of stones. Gold 
and amber ornaments appear in this age. 
The iron age is that in which implements, 









ARCHAEOPTERYX 


ARCHER-FISH. 


Sic., of iron begin to appear, although stone 
and bronze implements are found along with 
them. The word age in this sense (as ex¬ 
plained under Age) simply denotes the stage 
at which a people has arrived. The phrase 
stone age, therefore, merely marks the 
period before the use of bronze, the bronze 
age that before the employment of iron, 
among any specific people. 

Archaeopteryx (ar-ke-op'te-riks), aunique 
fossil bird from the oolitic limestone of 
Solenhofen, of the size of a rook, and differ¬ 
ing from all known birds in having two free 
claws representing the thumb and fore¬ 
finger projecting from the wing, and about 
twenty tail vertebrae free and prolonged as 
in mammals. 

Archangel (ark'an-jel; Gr. prefix, arch-, 
denoting chief), an angel of superior or of 
the highest rank. The only archangel men¬ 
tioned by name in Scripture is Michael in 
the Epistle of Jude. 

Archangel (ark-an'jel), a seaport, capi¬ 
tal of the Russian government of same 
name, on the right bank of the northern 
Dwina, about 20 miles above its mouth in 
the White Sea. Below the town the river 
divides into several branches and forms a 
number of islands, on one of which, called 
Sollenbole, is the harbour. The houses 
are mostly of wood; the place has some 
manufactures and an important trade, ex¬ 
porting linseed, flax, tow, tallow, train oil, 
mats, timber, pitch and tar, &c. The port 
is closed for six months by ice. Arch¬ 
angel, founded in 1584, was long the only 
port which Russia possessed. Pop. 19,540. 
—The province has an area of 331,490 sq. 
miles; pop. 311,673. 

Archangel'ica. See Angelica. 

Archbishop (arch-), a chief bishop, or 
bishop over other bishops; a metropolitan 
prelate. The establishment of this dignity 
is to be traced up to an early period of (-hris- 
tianity, when the bishops and inferior clergy 
met in the capitals to deliberate on spiritual 
affairs, and the bishop of the city where the 
meeting was held presided. In England 
there are two (Protestant) archbishops— 
those of Canterbury and York; the former 
styled Primate of all England , the latter 
Primate of England. The Archbishop of 
Canterbury is the first peer of the realm, 
having precedence before all great officers 
of the crown and all dukes not of royal birth. 
He crowns the sovereign, and when he is 
invested with his archbishopric he is said to 
J)e enthroned, He can grant special licenses 


to marry at any time or place, and can con¬ 
fer all the degrees that may be obtained 
from the universities. He is addressed by 
the titles of your grace and most reverend 
father in God, and writes himself by divine 
providence, while the bishop only writes by 
divine permission. The first Archbishop of 
Canterbury was Augustine, appointed a.d. 
598 by Ethelbert. Next in dignity is the 
Archbishop of York, between whom and 
the Archbishop of Canterbury the Lord 
High-chancellor of England has his place 
in precedency. The incomes of these two 
prelates are £15,000 and £10,000 respec¬ 
tively. Scotland had two archbishops— 
those of St. Andrews and Glasgow. Ire¬ 
land had four—Dublin, Armagh, Tuam, 
and Cashel. In the United States thereare 
thirteen (Roman Catholic) archdioceses. 

Archdeacon (arch-), in England, an eccle¬ 
siastical dignitary next in rank below a 
bishop, who has jurisdiction either over a 
part of or over the whole diocese. He is 
usually appointed by the bishop, under whom 
he performs various duties, and he holds a 
court which decides cases subject to an ap¬ 
peal to the bishop. 

Archduke, a prince belonging to the 
reigning family of Austria. 

Archelaus (ar-ke-la'us), the name of sev¬ 
eral personages in ancient history, one of 
whom was the son of Herod the Great. He 
received fi’om Augustus the sovereignty of 
Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. The people, 
tired of his tyrannical and bloody reign, 
accused him before Augustus, who banished 
him to Gaul. 

Archer-fish, a name given to the Toxbtes 
jaculdtor , a scaly-finned, acanthopterygian 



Archer-fish (Toxotes jaculdtor). 


fish, about 6 inches long, inhabiting the seas 
around Java, which has the faculty of shoot¬ 
ing drops of water to the distance of 3 or 4 
fest at insects, thereby causing them to fall 
into the water, when it seizes and devours 
them. The soft, and even the spiny portion 
of their dorsal fins are so covered with scales 
as to be scarcely distinguishable from 
rest of the body. 



ARCHILOCHUS. 


ARCHERY 


Archery, the art of shooting with a bow 
and arrow. The use of these weapons in 
war and the chase dates from the earliest 
antiquity. Ishmael, we learn from Gen. xxi., 
‘ became an archer.’ The Egyptians, Assyr¬ 
ians, Persians, Parthians, excelled in the use 
of the bow; and while the Greeks and Ro¬ 
mans themselves made little use of it, they 
employed foreign archers as mercenaries. 
Coming to much more recent times, we find 
the Swiss famous as archers, but they gener¬ 
ally used the arbalist or cross-bow, and were 


no match for their English rivals, who pre¬ 
ferred the long-bow. (See Bow.) The Eng¬ 
lish victories of Cressy, Poitiers, and Agin- 
court, gained against apparently overwhelm¬ 
ing odds, may be ascribed to the bowmen. 
Archery disappeared gradually as firearms 
came into use, and as an instrument of war or 
the chase the bow is now confined to the most 
savage tribes of both hemispheres. But 
though the bow has been long abandoned 
among civilized nations as amilitary weapon, 
it is still cherished as an instrument of health- 



Assyrian Archer. 


Egyptian Archer with arrow-heads and stone-tipped reed arrow. 


ful recreation, encouraged by archery clubs 
or societies, which have been established in 
many parts of Britain. The oldest, and by 
far the most historically important of these 
societies, is the Royal Company of Archers, 
called also the King’s Bodyguard for 
Scotland, formed originally, it is said, by 
James I., but constituted in its present 
form by an act of the privy-council of Scot¬ 
land in 1676, and having its headquarters in 
Edinburgh, counting among its members 
many of the nobility and gentry of the 
northern kingdom, and holding annual meet¬ 
ings, where prizes are competed for. In re¬ 
cent years a number of clubs have been 
formed in the United States. Archery has 
the merit of forming a sport open to women 
as well as men. 

Arches Court, the chief and most ancient 
consistory court, belonging to the archbishop¬ 
ric of Canterbury, for the debating of spirit¬ 
ual causes. It is named from the church in 
London, St. Mary le Bow, or Bow Church 
(so called from a fine arched crypt), where it 
was formerly held. The jurisdiction of this 


court extends over the province of Canter¬ 
bury. The office of president or dean is now 
merged in that of the judge appointed by the 
Public Worship Act (1877). 

Archil, or Orchil (ar'kil, or'kil), a red, 
violet, or purple colouring matter obtained 
from various kinds of lichens, the most 
important of which are the Roccella tinctoria 
and the R. fuciformis, natives of the rocks 
of the Canary and Cape de Yerd islands, 
Mozambique and Zanzibar, South America, 
&c., and popularly called dyer’s-moss. The 
dye is used for improving the tints of other 
dyes, as from its want of permanence it 
cannot be employed alone; but the aniline 
colours have largely superseded it. Cudbear 
and litmus are of similar origin. 

Archilochus (ar-kil'o-kus) of Paros, one 
of the earliest Ionian lyric poets, the first 
Greek poet who composed iambic verses 
according to fixed rules. He flourished 
about 700 b.c. His iambic poems were re¬ 
nowned for force of style, liveliness of meta¬ 
phor, and a powerful but bitter spirit of 
satire, In other lyric poems of a higher 


























ARCHIMANDRITE-ARCHITECTURE. 


character he was also considered as a model. 
All his works are lost but a few frag¬ 
ments. 

Archiman'drite, in the Greek Church, an 
abbot or abbot-general, who has the superin¬ 
tendence of many abbots and convents. 

Archime'dean Screw, a machine for rais¬ 
ing water, said to have been invented by 
Archimedes. It is formed by winding a 
tube spirally round a cylinder so as to have 
the form of a screw, or by hollowing out the 
cylinder itself into a double or triple threaded 
screw and inclosing it in a water-tight 
case. When the screw is placed in an in¬ 
clined position and the lower end immersed 
in water, by causing the screw to revolve 
the water may be raised to a limited ex¬ 
tent. 

Archimedes (ar-ki-me'dez), a celebrated 
ancient Greek physicist and geometrician, 
born at Syracuse, in Sicily, about 287 B.c. 
He devoted himself entirely to science, and 
enriched mathematics with discoveries of 
the highest importance, upon which the 
moderns have founded their admeasure¬ 
ments of curvilinear surfaces and solids. 
Archimedes is the only one among the 
ancients who has left us anything satisfac¬ 
tory on the theory of mechanics and on 
hydrostatics. He first taught the hydrosta¬ 
tic principle to which his name is attached, 

‘ that a body immersed in a fluid loses as 
much in weight as the weight of an equal 
volume of the fluid,’ and determined by 
means of it that an artist had fraudulently 
added too much alloy to a crown which 
King Hiero had ordered to be made of pure 
gold. He discovered the solution of this 
problem while bathing; and it is said to have 
caused him so much joy that he hastened 
home from the bath undressed, and crying 
out, Eureka ! Eureka ! ‘ I have found it, I 
have found it!’ Practical mechanics also 
received a great deal of attention from 
Archimedes, who boasted that if he had a 
fulcrum or standpoint he could move the 
world. He is the inventor of the com¬ 
pound pulley, probably of the endless screw, 
the archimedean screw, &c. During the 
siege of Syracuse by the Romans he is said 
to have constructed many wonderful ma¬ 
chines with which he repelled their attacks, 
and he is stated to have set on fire their 
fleet by burning-glasses' At the moment 
when the Romans gained possession of the 
city by assault (212 B.c.) tradition relates 
that Archimedes was slain while .sitting in 
the market-place contemplating some ma¬ 


thematical figures which he had drawn in 
the sand. 

Archimedes, Principle of. See Archi¬ 
medes. 

Archimedes’ Screw. See Archimedean 

Screw. 

ArchipeTago, a term originally applied to 
the HEgcean, the sea lying between Greece 
and Asia Minor, then to the numerous 
islands situated therein, and latterly to any 
cluster of islands. In the Grecian Archi¬ 
pelago the islands nearest the European 
coast lie together almost in a circle, and for 
this reason are called the Cyclades (Gr. 
kyklos, a circle); those nearest the Asiatic, 
being farther from one another, the Spo- 
rades (‘scattered’). (See these articles, 
and Negropont , Scio, Samos, Rhodes, Cyprus, 
&c.) The Malay, Indian, or Eastern Archi¬ 
pelago, on the east of Asia, includes Borneo, 
Sumatra, and other large islands. See 
Malay Archipelago. 

Architecture, in a general sense, is the 
art of designing and constructing houses, 
bridges, and other buildings for the purposes 
of civil life; or, in a more limited but very 
common sense, that branch of the fine arts 
which has for its object the production of 
edifices not only convenient for their special 
purpose, but characterized by unity, beauty, 
and often grandeur.—The first habitations of 
man were such as nature afforded, or cost 
little labour to the occu pant—caves, huts, and 
tents. But as soon as men rose in civiliza¬ 
tion and formed settled societies they began 
to build more commodious and comfortable 
habitations. They bestowed more care on 
the materials, preparing bricks of clay or 
earth, which they at first dried in the air, 
but afterwards baked by fire; and latterly 
they smoothed stones and joined them at 
first without, and subsequently with mor¬ 
tar or cement. After they had learned 
to build houses, they erected temples for 
their gods on a larger and more splendid 
scale than their own dwellings. The 
Egyptians are the most ancient nation 
known to us among whom architecture had 
attained the character of a fine art. Other 
ancient peoples among whom it had made 
great progress were the Babylonians, whose 
most celebrated buildings were temples, 
palaces, and hanging-gardens; the Assyrians, 
whose capital, Nineveh, was rich in splen¬ 
did buildings; the Phoenicians, whose cities, 
Sidon, Tyre, &c., were adorned with equal 
magnificence ; and the Israelites, whose 
temple was a wonder of architecture. But 

216 



ARCHITECTURE. 




Egyptian—Front of Temple of Isis at Philas 


comparatively few architectural monuments its greatest perfection in the age of Pericles, 
of these latter nations have remained till or about 460-430 B.c. The great masters 
our day. of this period were Phidias, Ictinus, Calli- 

This is not the case with the architecture crates, &c. All the extant buildings are 
of Egypt, however, of which we possess more or less in ruins. The style is charac- 
ample remains in the shape of pyramids, terized by beauty, harmony, and simplicity 
temples, sepulchres, obelisks, &c. Egyptian in the highest degree. Distinctive of it are 
chronology is 
far from certain, 
but the greatest 
of the archi¬ 
tectural monu¬ 
ments of the 
country, the py¬ 
ramids of Ghi- 
zeh, are at least 
as old as 2800 
or 2700 B.c. 

The Egyptian 
temples had 
walls of great 
thickness and 
sloping on the 

outside from bottom to top; the roofs were 
flat, and composed of blocks of stone reach¬ 
ing from one wall or column to another. 

The columns were numerous, close, and 
very stout, generally without bases, and 
exhibiting great variety in the designs of 
their capitals. The principle of the arch 
though known 
was not em ployed 
for architectural 
purposes. Sta¬ 
tues of enormous 
size, sphinxes 
carved in stone, 
and on the walls 
sculptures iu out¬ 
line of deities and 
animals, with in¬ 
numerable hiero¬ 
glyphics, are the 
decorative ob¬ 
jects which be¬ 
long to this style. 

The earliest 
architectural re¬ 
mains of Greece 
of unknown 


Grecian Doric—Temple of J upiter at Olympia. 


are 


what are called 
the orders of ar¬ 
chitecture, by 
which term are 
understood cer¬ 
tain modes 
of proportion¬ 
ing and decor¬ 
ating the col¬ 
umn and its su¬ 
perimposed en¬ 
tablature. The 
Greeks had 
three orders, 
called respec¬ 
tively th eDoric, 
Ionic , and Corinthian. (See articles under 
these names.) Greek buildings were abund¬ 
antly adorned with sculptures, and painting 
was extensively used, the details of the struc¬ 
tures being enriched by different colours or 
tints. Lowness of roofs and the absence of 
arches were distinctive features of Greek 

architecture, in 
which, as in that 
of Egypt, hori- 
zontality of line 
is another char¬ 
acteristic mark. 
The most re¬ 
markable public 
edifices of the 
Greeks were 
temples, of which 
the most famous 
is the Parthen¬ 
on at Athens. 
Others exist in 
various parts of 
Greece as well as 
in Sicily, South¬ 
ern Italy, Asia 
Minor, &c., 


antiquity, and consist of massive walls built where important Greek communities were 
of huge blocks of stone. In historic times —- 1 " nn '"- — : 

the Greeks developed an architecture of 
noble simplicity and dignity. This style is 
of modern origin compared with that of 
Egypt, and the earliest remains give indica¬ 
tions that it was in part derived from the 
Egyptian. It is considered to have attained 

217 


early settled. Their theatres were semi¬ 
circular on one side and square on the 
other, the semicircular part being usually 
excavated in the side of some convenient 
hill. This part, the auditorium, was filled 
with concentric seats, and might be capable 
of containing 20,000 spectators. A number 






































































































































































ARCHITECTURE. 


exist in Greece, Sicily, and Asia Minor, and 
elsewhere. No remains of private houses 
are known to exist. By the end of the 
Peloponnessian War (say 400 B.c.) the best 
period of Greek architecture was over; a 
noble simplicity had given place to excess 
of ornament. 

After the death 
of Alexander the 
Great (323) the 
decline was still 
more marked. 

Among the 
Romans there 
was no original 
development of 
architecture as 
among the 
Greeks, though 
they early took 
the foremost 
place in the con¬ 
struction of such 
works as aque¬ 
ducts and sewers, the arch being in early 
and extensive use among this people. As 
a fine art, however, Roman architecture 
had its origin in copies of the Greek models, 
all the Grecian orders being introduced into 
Rome, and variously modified. Their num¬ 
ber, moreover, was augmented by the addi¬ 
tion of two new orders—the Tuscan and 
the Composite. 

The Romans be¬ 
came acquainted 
with the architec¬ 
ture of the Greeks 
soon after 2 )0 b.c., 
but it was not till 
about two centu¬ 
ries later that the 
architecture of 
Rome attained 
(under Augustus) 
its greatest perfec¬ 
tion. Among the 
great works now 
erected were tem¬ 
ples, aqueducts, 
amphitheatres, magnificent villas, triumphal 
arches, monumental pillars, &c. The amphi¬ 
theatre differed from the theatre in being a 
completely circular or rather elliptical build¬ 
ing, filled on all sides with ascending seats for 
spectators and leaving only the central space, 
called the arena, for the combatants and 
public shows. The Coliseum is a stupendous 
structure of this kind. The thermal or baths, 


were vast structures in which multitudes 
of people could bathe at once. Magnificent 
tombs were often built by the wealthy. Re¬ 
mains of private residences are numerous, 
and the excavations at Pompeii in particular 
have thrown great light on the internal ar¬ 
rangements of 
the Roman 
dwelling - house. 
Almost all the 
successors of 
Augustus em¬ 
bellished Rome 
more or less, 
erected splen¬ 
did palaces and 
temples, and 
adorned, like 
Hadrian, even 
the conquered 
countries with 
them. But after 
the period of 
Hadrian (117— 
138 A.D. ) Roman architecture is consi¬ 
dered to have been on the decline. The 
refined and noble style of the Greeks was 
neglected, and there was an attempt to 
embellish the beautiful more and more. 
This decline was all the more rapid latterly 
from the disturbed state of the empire and 
the incursions of the barbarians. 

In Constantin¬ 
ople, after its vir¬ 
tual separation 
from the Western 
Empire, arose a 
style of art and 
architecture which 
was practised by 
the Greek Church 
during the whole 
of the middle ages. 
This is called the 
Byzantine style. 
The church of St. 
Sophia at Constan¬ 
tinople, built by 
Justinian (reigned 
527 565), offers the most typical specimen 
of the style, of which the fundamental prin¬ 
ciple was an application of the Roman arch, 
the dome being the most striking feature of 
the building. In the most typical examples 
the dome or cupola rests on four penden- 
tives. 

After the dismemberment of the Roman 
Empire the beautiful works of ancient 

218 




Byzantine—Church of Our Lady at Constantinople. 



























































































































































ARCHITECTURE. 


architecture were almost entirely destroyed 
by the Goths, Vandals, and other barba¬ 
rians in Italy, Greece, Asia, Spain, and 
Africa; or what was spared by them was 
ruined by the fanaticism of the Christians. 
A new style of architecture now arose, two 
forms of which, the Lombard and the Nor¬ 
man Romanesque, form important phases 
of art. The Lombard prevailed in North 
Italy and South Germany from the eighth 
or ninth to the thirteenth century (though 
the Lombard rule came to an end in 774); 


the Norman Romanesque flourished, espe¬ 
cially in Normandy and England, from the 
eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury. The semicircular arch is the most 
characteristic feature of this style. With 
the Lombard Romanesque were combined 
Byzantine features, and buildings in the pure 
Byzantine style were also erected in Italy, 
as the Church of St. Mark at Venice. 

The conquests of the Moors introduced a 
fresh style of architecture into Europe after 
the eighth century—the Moorish or Sara- 



Romanesque—Cathedral of Worms. 


cenic. This style accompanied the spread 
of Mohammedanism after its rise in Arabia 
in the seventh century. The edifices erected 
by the Moors and Saracens in Spain, Egypt, 
and Turkey are distinguished, among other 
things, by a peculiar form of the arch, 
which forms a curve constituting more 
than half of a circle or ellipse. A peculiar 
flowery decoration, called arabesque, is a 
common ornament of this style, of which the 
building called the Alhambra [see Alhambra) 
is perhaps the chief glory. 

r I he Germans were unacquainted with 
architecture until the time of Charlemagne 
(or Charles the Great, 742-814). He intro¬ 
duced into Germany the Byzantine and 
Romanesque styles. Afterwards the Moor¬ 
ish or Arabian style had some influence upon 
that of the western nations, and thus origi¬ 
nated the mixed style which maintained it¬ 
self till the middle of the thirteenth century. 
Then began the modern Gothic style, which 
grew up in France. England, and Germany. 
Its striking characteristics are its pointed 
arches, its pinnacles and spires, its large 

m 


buttresses, clustered pillars, vaulted roofs, 
profusion of ornament, and, on the whole, its 
lofty, bold character. Its most distinctive 
feature, as compared with the Greek or the 
Egyptian style, is the predominance in it 
of perpendicular or rising lines, producing 
forms that convey the idea of soaring or 
mounting upwards. Its greatest capabi¬ 
lities have been best displayed in ecclesi¬ 
astical edifices. The Gothic style is divided 
into four principal epochs: the Early 
Pointed, or general style of the thirteenth 
century; the Decorated, or style of the 
fourteenth century; the Perpendicular, 
practised during the fifteenth and early part 
of the sixteenth centuries; and the Tudor, 
or general style of the sixteenth century. 
This style lasted in England up to the 
seventeenth century, being gradually dis¬ 
placed by that branch of the Renaissance 
or modified revival of ancient Roman ar¬ 
chitecture which is known as the Eliza¬ 
bethan style , and which is perhaps more 
purely an English style than any other that 
can be named, 






































ARCHITECTURE 


ARCHONS. 


The rise of the Renaissance style in Italy 
is the greatest event in the history of archi¬ 
tecture after the introduction of the Gothic 
style. The Gothic style had been intro¬ 
duced into the country and extensively em¬ 
ployed, but had never been thoroughly 
naturalized. The Renaissance is a revival 
of the classic style based on the study of 
the ancient models; and having practically 
commenced in Florence about the beginning 
of the fifteenth century, it soon spread with 
great rapidity over Italy and the greater 
part of Europe. The most illustrious archi¬ 
tects of this early period of the style were 
Brunelleschi, who built at Florence the dome 
of the cathedral, the Pitti Palace, &c., be¬ 
sides many edifices at Milan, Pisa, Pesaro, 
and Mantua; Alberti, who wrote an im¬ 
portant work on architecture, and erected 
many admired churches; Bramante, who 
began the building of St. Peter s, Rome, and 
Michael Angelo, who erected its magnificent 
dome. On St. Peter’s were also employed 
Raphael, Peruzzi, and San Gallo. The no¬ 
blest building in this style of architecture 
in Britain is St. Paul’s, London, the work of 
Sir Christopher Wren. 

Since the Renaissance period there has 
been no architectural development requir¬ 
ing special note. In edifices erected at the 
present day some one of the various styles 
of architecture are employed according to 
taste. Modern dwelling-houses have neces¬ 
sarily a style of their own as far as stories 
and apartments and windows and chimneys 
can give them one. In general the Grecian 
style, as handed down by Rome and modified 
by the Italian architects of the Renaissance, 
from its right angles and straight entabla¬ 
tures, is more convenient, and fits better with 
the distribution of our common edifices, than 
the pointed and irregular Gothic. But the 
occasional introduction of the Gothic out¬ 
line and the partial employment of its orna¬ 
ments has undoubtedly an agreeable effect 
both in public and private edifices; and we 
are indebted to it, among other things, for 
the spire, a structure exclusively Gothic, 
which, though often misplaced, has become 
an object of general approbation and a 
pleasing landmark to cities and villages. The 
works most characteristic of the present 
day are the grand bridges, viaducts, &c., 
in many of which iron is the sole or most 
characteristic portion of the material. 

To compare the different countries in re¬ 
gard to their success in the field of modern 
architecture would be difficult, inasmuch as 


they have all produced architectural works 
worthy of their advances in material pros¬ 
perity, education, and taste. Nor have the 
United States, Canada, and the Australian 
colonies shown themselves backward in fol¬ 
lowing the lead of the older countries of 
Europe. In America the increase in the 
number of handsome buildings has been 
very noteworthy since the termination of 
the civil war. 

A few words may be added on the archi¬ 
tecture of India and China. Although many 
widely differing stvles are to be found in 
India, the oldest and onlv true native style 
of Indian ecclesiastical architecture is the 
Buddhist, the earliest specimens dating to 
250 B.c. Among the chief objects of Buddh¬ 
ist art are stupas or topes, built in the form 
of large towers, and employed as ddgobas to 
contain relics of Biiddha or of some noted 
saint. Other works of Buddhist art are 
temples or monasteries excavated from the 
solid rock, and supported by pillars of the 
natural rock left in their places. Buddhist 
architecture is found in Ceylon, Tibet, Java, 
&c., as well as in India. The most remark¬ 
able Hindu or Brahmanical temples are in 
Southern India. 'They are pyramidal in 
form, rising in a series of stories. The 
Saracenic or Mohammedan architecture lat¬ 
terly introduced into India is of course of 
foreign origin. The Chinese have made the 
tent the elementary feature of their architec¬ 
ture; and of their style any one may form 
an idea by inspecting the figures which are 
depicted upon common chinaware. Chinese 
roofs are concave on the upper side, as if 
made of canvas instead of wood. (For 
further information on the different subjects 
pertaining to architecture see separate ar¬ 
ticles on the different styles —Greek, Ro¬ 
man, Gothic, &c.—and such entries as Arch, 
Column , A queduct, Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, 
Theatre, &c.) 

Architrave (ar'ki-trav), in architecture, 
the part of an entablature which rests im¬ 
mediately on the heads of the columns, 
being the lowest of its three principal divi¬ 
sions. the others being the frieze and the 
cornice. 

Archives (ar'klvz). See Records. 

Archivolt (ar'ki-volt), in architecture, the 
ornamental band of mouldings on the face 
of an arch and following its contour. 

Archons (ar'konz), the chief magistrates 
of ancient Athens, chosen to superintend 
civil and religious concerns. They were 
nine in number; the first was propeidy the 

220 



ARCHYTAS-ARCTIC REGIONS. 


archon, or archdn eponymos , by whose name 
the year was distinguished in the public 
records; the second was called archon basi- 
leus, or king archon, who exercised the func¬ 
tions of high-priest; the third, polemarchos, 
or general of the forces. The other six 
were called thesmothetai, or legislators 

Archytas (ar-kl'tas), an ancient Greek 
mathematician, statesman, and general, who 
flourished about 400 B.C., and belonged to 
Tarentum in Southern Italy. The inven¬ 
tion of the analytic method in mathematics 
is ascribed to him, as well as the solution of 
many geometrical and mechanical problems. 
He constructed various machines and auto¬ 
mata, among the most celebrated of which 
was his flying pigeon. He was a Pythago¬ 
rean in philosophy, and Plato and Aristotle 
are said to have been both deeply indebted 
to him. Only inconsidex*able fragments of 
his works are extant. 

Arcis-sur-Aube (ar-se-sur-ob), a small 
town of France, dep. Aube, at which, in 
1814, was fought a battle between Napoleon 
and the allies, 
after which the 
latter marched to 
Paris. Pop. 2928. 

Arc-light, that 
species of the 
electric light in 
which the illumi¬ 
nating source is 
the current of elec¬ 
tricity passing be¬ 
tween two sticks 
of carbon kept a 
short distance 
apart, one of them 
being in connec¬ 
tion with the posi¬ 
tive, the other with the negative terminal 
of a battery or dynamo. 

Arco, a town of Tirol, near Lake Garda, 
a favourite winter resort of invalids. Pop. 
5423. 

Arcole (ar'ko-la), a village in North Italy, 
15 «iiles s.E. of Yerona, celebrated for the 
battles of Nov. 15, 16, and 17, 1796, fought 
between the French under Bonaparte and 
the Austrians, in which the latter were 
defeated with great slaughter. 

Arcos' de la Fronte'ra, a city of Spain, 
30 miles E. by N. from Cadiz, on the Gua- 
dalete, here crossed by a stone bridge, on a 
sandstone rock 570 feet above the level of 
the river. On the highest part of the rock 
stands the castle of the dukes of Arcos, 

221 


partly in ru'ins. The principal manufactures 
are leather, hats, and cordage. Pop. 16,280. 

Ar'cot, two districts and a town of India, 
within the Presidency of Madras. North 
A root is an inland district with an area of 
7256 sq. m. The country is partly flat and 
partly mountainous, where intersected by 
the Eastern Ghats. Pop. 1,817,814.— 
South Arcot lies on the Bay of Bengal, 
and has two seaports, Cuddalor and Porto 
Novo. Pop. 1,814,738.—The town Arcot 
is in North Arcot, on the Palar, about 70 
miles w. by s. of Madras. There is a mili¬ 
tary cantonment at 3 miles’ distance. The 
town contains handsome mosques, a nabob’s 
palace in ruins, and the remains of an exten¬ 
sive fort. Arcot played an important part 
in the wars which resulted in the ascendency 
of the British in India. It was taken by 
Clive, 31st August, 1751, and heroically 
defended by him against an apparently over¬ 
whelming force under Rajah Sahib. Pop. 
12 , 000 . 

Arctic (ark'tik), an epithet given to the 
north pole from the proximity of the con¬ 
stellation of the Bear, in Greek called ark- 
tos. The Arctic Circle is an imaginary 
circle on the globe, parallel to the equator, 
and 23° 28'distant from the north pole. This 
and its opposite, the Antarctic, are called 
the two polar circles. 

Arctic Expeditions. See North Polar 
Expeditions. 

Arctic Ocean, that part of the water sur¬ 
face of the earth which surrounds the north 
pole, and washes the northern shores of 
Europe, Asia, and America; its southern 
boundary roughly coinciding with the Arctic 
Circle (lat. 66° 32' N.). It incloses many 
large islands, and contains large bays and 
gulfs which deeply indent the northern 
shores of the three continents. Its great 
characteristic is ice, which is nearly con¬ 
stant everywhere. 

Arctic Regions, the regions round the 
north pole, and extending from the pole on 
all sides to the Arctic Circle in lat. 66° 32' 
N. The Arctic or North Polar Circle just 
touches the northern headlands of Iceland, 
cuts off the southern and narrowest portion 
of Greenland, crosses Fox’s Strait north of 
Hudson’s Bay, whence it goes over the 
American continent to Behring’s Strait. 
Thence it runs to Obdorsk at the mouth of 
the Obi, then crossing northern Russia, the 
White Sea, and the Scandinavian Peninsula, 
returns to Iceland. Though much skill and 
heroism have been developed in the explora- 








ARCTIUM 

tion of this portion of the earth, there is still 
an area round the pole estimated at 2,500,000 
sq. m., which is a blank to geographers. 
Many have adopted the belief in the exis¬ 
tence of an open polar sea about the north 
pole. But this belief is not supported by 
any positive evidence. Valuable minerals, 
fossils, &c., have been discovered within the 
Arctic regions. In the archipelago north of 
the American continent excellent coal fre¬ 
quently occurs. The mineral cryolite is 
mined in Greenland. Fossil ivory is obtained 
in islands at the mouth of the Lena. In Scan¬ 
dinavia, parts of Siberia, and north-west 
America, the forest region extends within 
the Arctic Circle. The most characteristic 
of the natives of the Arctic regions are the 
Esquimaux. The most notable animals are 
the white-bear, the musk-ox, the reindeer, 
and the whalebone whale. Fur-bearing 
animals are numerous. The most intense 
cold ever registered in those regions was 
74° below zero Fahr. The aurora borealis 
is a brilliant phenomenon of Arctic nights. 
See North Polar Expeditions. 

Arc'tium. See Burdock. 

Arctomys. See Marmot. 

Arctu'rus, a fixed star of the first magni¬ 
tude in the constellation of Bootes, and 
thought by some to be the nearest to our 
system of any of the fixed stars. It is one 
of the stars observed to have a motion of its 
own, and is a noticeable object in the nor¬ 
thern heavens. 

Ardahan', a small fortified town about 
6400 feet above the sea, between Kars and 
Batum in Russian Armenia. It was cap¬ 
tured bv the Russians in 1877, and ceded 
to them by the Berlin treaty, 1878. 

Ar'dea, the genus to which the heron 
belongs, type of the family Ardeidae, which 
includes also cranes, storks, bitterns, &c. 

Ar'debil, or Ardabil, a Persian town, pro¬ 
vince of Azerbijan, near the Karasu, a tri¬ 
butary of the Aras, about 40 m. from the 
Caspian, in an elevated and healthy situation; 
it has mineral springs and a considerable 
trade. Pop. 20,000. 

Ardeche (ar-dash), a dep. in the south 
of France (Languedoc), on the west side of 
the Rhone, taking its name from the river 
Ardkche, which rises within it, and falls 
into the Rhone after a course of 46 miles; 
area, 2134 sq. miles. It is generally of a 
mountainous character, and contains the 
culminating point of the Cevennes. Silk and 
wine are produced. Annonay is the principal 
town, but Privas is the capital. Pop. 375,472. 


— ARENA. 

Ardennes (ar-den'), an extensive tract 
of hilly land stretching over a large portion 
of the north-east of France and south-west 
of Belgium. Anciently the whole tract 
formed one immense forest ( Arduenna Silva 
of Caesar); but though extensive districts 
are still under wood, large portions are 
now occupied by cultivated fields and popu¬ 
lous towns. 

Ardennes (ar-den'), a frontier department 
in the north-east of France; area, 2020 sq. 
miles, partly consisting of the Forest of Ar¬ 
dennes. There are extensive slate-quarries, 
numerous ironworks, and important manu¬ 
factures of cloth, ironware, leather, glass, 
earthenware, &c. Chief towns, Mezieres 
(the capital), Rocroi, and Sedan. Pop. 
332,759. 

Ardnamurchan (-mur'kan) Point, the 
most westerly point of the island of Great 
Britain, in Argyllshire, having a lighthouse, 
180 feet above sea-level, visible 18 to 20 
miles off. 

Ar'doch, a parish in south Perthshire, 
celebrated for its Roman remains, one a 
camp, being the most perfect existing in 
Scotland. 

Ardross'an, a seaport of Scotland, in 
Ayrshire, on the Firth of Clyde, with a 
good and spacious harbour, from which coal 
and iron are extensively exported. Pop. 
4036. 

Are (ar), the unit of the French land 
measure, equal to 100 square metres, or 
1076'44 square feet. A hectare is 100 ares, 
equal to 2’47 acres. 

Area, the superficial content of any figure 
or space, the quantity of surface it contains 
in terms of any unit. 

Areca, a genus of lofty palms with pin¬ 
nated leaves, and a drupe-like fruit inclosed 
in a fibrous rind. A. Catechu of the Coro¬ 
mandel and Malabar coasts is the common 
areca palm which yields areca or betel nuts, 
and also the astringent juice catechu. A. 
oleracea is the cabbage-tree or cabbage-palm 
of the West Indies. With lime and the 
leaves of the betel-pepper, the areca-nuts 
when green form the celebrated masticatory 
of the East. They are an important article 
in Eastern trade. 

Arecibo (a-re-the'bo), a seaport town on 
the north coast of the island of Porto Rico. 
Pop. 10,000. 

Areiopagus. See Areopagus. 

Are'na, the inclosed space in the central 
part of the Roman amphitheatres, in which 
took place the combats of gladiators or wild 

222 



ARENDAL-AREZZO. 


beasts. It was usually covered with sand 
or saw-dust to prevent the gladiators from 
slipping, and to absorb the blood. 

.Arendal, a seaport of southern Norway, 
exporting quantities of timber and iron 
and owning numerous ships. Pop. 4132. 

Arenic ola. See Lobworm. 

Areolar Tissue, an assemblage of fibres 
and laminae pervading every part of the 
animal structure, and connected with each 
other so as to form innumerable small cavi¬ 
ties, by means of which the various organs 


and parts of organs are connected together; 
called also Cellular Tissue and Connective 
Tissue .—In botany the term is sometimes 
applied to the non -vascular substance, com¬ 
posed entirely of untransformed cells, which 
forms the soft substance of plants. 

Areometer (from Greek araios , thin, 
metron, a measure), an instrument for mea¬ 
suring the specific gravity of liquids; a 
hydrometer (which see). 

Areop agus, the oldest of the Athenian 
courts of justice. It obtained its name from 



Arezzo—Palazzo della Fraternita and Church of Santa Maria. 


its place of meeting, on the Hill of Ares 
(Mars), near the citadel. It existed from 
very remote times, and the crimes tried 
before it were wilful murder, poisoning, 
robbery, arson, dissoluteness of morals, and 
innovations in the state and in religion. 
Its meetings were held in the open air, and 
its members were selected from those who 
had held the office of archon. 

Arequipa (a-ra-ke'pa), a city of Peru, 
200 miles south of Cuzco, situated in a fer¬ 
tile valley, 7850 feet above sea level. Be¬ 
fore the earthquake of 1868, which al¬ 
most totally destroyed it, it was one of the 
best-built towns of South America. Behind 
the city rises the volcano of Arequipa, or 
Peak of Mist£ (20,328 feet). A consider¬ 
able trade is carried on through Mollendo, 
which has superseded Islay as the port of 
Arequipa, and is connected with it by rail¬ 
way. Pop. 40,000. 

Ares (a'rez). See Mars. 

Arethu'sa, in Greek mythology, a daugh¬ 
ter of Nereus and Doris, a nymph changed 
by Artemis into a fountain in order to free 

223 


her from the pursuit of the river-god Al- 
pheus. 

Aretino (a-ra-te'no), Guido. See Guido. 

Aretino, Pietro, Italian poet, born at 
Arezzo 1492, died at Venice 1557; the 
natural son of a nobleman called Luigi 
Bacci. He early displayed a talent for sati¬ 
rical poetry, and when still a young man 
was banished from Arezzo on account of a 
sonnet against indulgences. He went to 
Perugia, and thence to Rome (1517), where 
he secured the papal patronage, but sub¬ 
sequently lost it through writing licentious 
sonnets. Through the influence of the 
Medici family he found an opportunity to 
insinuate himself into the favour of Fran¬ 
cis I. In 1527 Aretino went to Venice, 
where he acquired powerful friends, among 
them the Bishop of Vicenza. By his devo¬ 
tional writings he regained the favour of 
the Roman court. The obscenity of some 
of his writings was such that his name has 
become proverbial for licentiousness. Among 
them are five comedies and a tragedy. 

Arezzo (a-ret'so, anc. Arrctium ), a city 






















































ARGAL 


ARGENTINE. 


of Central Italy, capital of a province of 
the same name in Tuscany, near the con¬ 
fluence of the Chiana with the Arno. It 
has a noble cathedral, containing some fine 
pictures and monuments; remains of an 
ancient amphitheatre, &c. It was one of 
the twelve chief Etruscan towns, and in 
later times fought long against the Floren¬ 
tines, to whom it had finally to succumb. 
It is the birthplace of Maecenas, Petrarch, 
Pietro Aretino, Redi, and Vasari. Pop. 
11,816.—The province of Arezzo contains 
1276 square miles and 238,744 inhabitants. 

Ar'gal, Argol, or Tartar, a hard crust 
formed on the sides of vessels in which 
wine has been kept, red or white according 
to the colour of the wine. It is an impure 
bitartrate of potassium, and is of consider¬ 
able use among dyers as a mordant. When 
purified it forms cream of tartar. 

Ar'gala. See Adjutant-bird. 

Ar'gali, a species of wild sheep (CaprSvis 
Argali or Ovis ammon) found on the moun¬ 
tains of Siberia, Central Asia, and Kam- 
tchatka. It is 4 feet high at the shoulders, 
and proportionately stout in its build, with 
horns nearly 4 feet in length measured 
along the curve, and at their base about 
19 inches in circumference. It lives in 
small herds. 

Ar'gali, Sir Samuel, one of the early 
English adventurers to Virginia, born about 
1572, died 1639. He planned and executed 
the abduction of Pocahontas, the daughter 
of the Indian chief Powhattan, in order to 
secure the ransom of English prisoners. 
He was deputy-governor of Virginia (1617— 
1619), and was accused of many acts of 
rapacity and tyranny. In 1620 he served 
in an expedition against Algiers, and was 
knighted by James I. 

Ar'gand Lamp, a lamp named after its 
inventor, Aim6 Argand, a Swiss chemist 
and physician (born 1755, died 1803), the 
distinctive feature of which is a burner form¬ 
ing a ring or hollow cylinder covered by a 
chimney, so that the flame receives a current 
of air both on the inside and on the outside. 

Arga . ji (ar-ga'um), a village of India, 
in Berar, celebrated for the victory of 
General Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) 
over the Mahrattas under Scindia and the 
Rajah of Berar, 29th November, 1803. 

Ar'gelander, Friedrich Wilhelm Au¬ 
gust, eminent German astronomer, born at 
Memel, 1799, died 1875; djrector succes¬ 
sively of the observatories of Abo and of Hel¬ 
singfors ; appointed professor of astronomy 


at Bonn, 1837, where he superintended the 
erection of a new observatory, catalogued 
over 320,000 stars, and produced several 
important astronomical wmrks. 

Argemone (ar-jem'o-ne), a small genus 
of ornamental American plants of the 
poppy order. From the seeds of A. mexi- 
cana is obtained an oil very useful to pain¬ 
ters. The handsomest species is A. grandi- 
jlora, which has large flowers of a pure white 
colour. 

Argensola (ar-7ien-s5'la), Lupercio and 
Bartolome Leonardo de, brothers, the 
“ Horaces of Spain,” born at Barbastro, in 
Aragon, the former in 1565, died in 1613; 
the latter born in 1566, died in 1631. 
Lupercio produced tragedies and lyric 
poems ; Bartolome a number of poems and 
a history of the Conquest of the Moluccas. 
Their writings are singularly alike in char¬ 
acter, and are reckoned among the Spanish 
classics. 

Argenson (ar-zhan-son), Marc Pierre 
de Voter, Comte d’, celebrated French 
statesman, born in 1696, died 1764. After 
holding a number of subordinate offices he 
became minister for foreign affairs, and 
succeeded in bringing about the Congress 
of Breda, which was the prelude to that of 
Aix-la-Chapelle. He was present at the 
battle of Fontenoy, and -was exiled to his 
estate for some years through the machina¬ 
tions of Madame Pompadour. His Con¬ 
siderations sur le Gouvernement de la 
France, was a very advanced study on the 
possibility of combining with a monarchic 
form of government democratic principles 
and local self-government. Les Essais, ou 
Loisirs d’un Ministre d’etat, published in 
1785, is a collection of characters and anec¬ 
dotes in the style of Montaigne. 

Ar'gent, in coats of arms, the heraldic 
term expressing silver: represented in en¬ 
graving by a plain white surface. 

Argentan (ar-zhan-tan), a French towm, 
dep. of Orne (Normandy), with an old 
castle, and some manufactures. Pop. 6300. 

Argenteuil (ar-zhan-teu-ye), a town in 
France, dep. Seine-et-Oise, 7 miles below 
Paris ; has an active trade in wine, fruit, 
and vegetables. Pop. 11,849. 

Argentie'ra, or Kimoli (ancient Cimolus ), 
an island in the Grecian Archipelago, one of 
the Cyclades, about 18 miles in circumfer¬ 
ence, rocky and sterile. Produces a deter¬ 
gent chalk called Cimolian earth, used in 
washing and bleaching. Pop. 1337. 

Argentine, a silvery-white slaty variety 
224 



ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 


of calc-spar, containing a little silica with 
laminae usually undulated. It is found in 
primitive rocks and frequently in metallic 
veins.—Argentine is also the name of a 
small British fish (Scopelus borealis) less 
than 2 inches long and of a silvery colour. 

Argentine Republic, formerly called the 
United Provinces of La Plata, a vast coun¬ 
try of South America, the extreme length 
of which is 2,400 miles, and the average 
breadth a little over 700 miles, the total 
area comprising 1,125,086 sq. miles. It is 
bounded on the N. by Bolivia; on the E. by 
Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and the At¬ 
lantic; on the 8. by the Antarctic Ocean; 
and on the w. by the Andes. It com¬ 
prises four great natural divisions: (1) the 
Andine region, containing the provinces of 
Mendoza, San Juan, Rioja, Catamarca, Tuc- 
uman, Salta, and Jujuy; (2) the Pampas, 
containing the provinces of Santiago, Santa 
Fd, Cordova, San Luis, and Buenos Ayres ; 
with the territories Formosa, Pampa, and 
Chaco; (3) the Argentine Mesopotamia, 
between the rivers Parang and Uruguay, 
containing the provinces of Entre Rios 
and Corrientes, and the territory Misi- 
ones; (4) Patagonia, including the eastern 
half of Tierra del Fuego. With the 
exception of the N. w., where lateral 
branches of the Andes run into the plain 
for 150 or 200 miles, and the province 
of Entre Rios, which is hilly, the charac¬ 
teristic feature of the country is the great 
monotonous and level plains called ‘ pam¬ 
pas.’ In the north these plains are partly 
forest - covered, but all the central and 
southern parts present vast treeless tracts, 
which afford pasture to immense herds 
of horses, oxen, and sheep, and are varied 
in some places by brackish swamps, in 
others by salt steppes. The great water¬ 
course of the country is the Parana, hav¬ 
ing a length of fully 2000 miles from its 
source in the mountains of Goyaz, Brazil, 
to its junction with the Uruguay, where 
begins the estuary of La Plata. The Pa- 
rani is formed by the union of the Upper 
Parana and Paraguay rivers, near the N.E. 
corner of the state. Important tributaries 
are the Pilcomayo, the Yermejo, and the 
Salado. The Parani, Paraguay, and Uru¬ 
guay are valuable for internal navigation. 
Many of the streams which tend eastward 
terminate in marshes and salt lakes, some 
of which are rather extensive. Not con¬ 
nected with the La Plata system are the 
Colorado and the Rio Negro, the latter for- 
vol. L 225 


merly the southern boundary of the state, 
separating it from Patagonia. The source 
of the Negro is Lake Nahuel Huapi, in 
Patagonia (area, 1200 sq. miles), in the 
midst of magnificent scenery. The level 
portions of the country are mostly of ter¬ 
tiary formation, and the river and coast re¬ 
gions consist mainly of alluvial soil of great 
fertility. In the pampas clay have been 
found the fossil remains of extinct mamma¬ 
lia, some of them of colossal size. 

European grains and fruits, including the 
vine, have been successfully introduced, and 
are cultivated to some extent in most parts 
of the republic, but the great wealth of the 
state lies in its countless herds of cattle and 
horses and flocks of sheep, which are pas¬ 
tured on the pampas, and which multiply 
there very rapidly. Gold, silver, nickel, cop¬ 
per, tin, lead, and iron, besides marble, jas¬ 
per, precious stones, and bitumen, are found 
in the mountainous districts of the N.W., 
while petroleum wells have been discovered 
on the Rio Vermejo; but the development 
of this mineral wealth has hitherto been 
greatly retarded by the want of proper 
means of transport. As a whole there are 
not extensive forests in the state except in 
the region of the Gran Chaco (which extends 
also into Bolivia), where, there is known to 
be 60,000 sq. miles of timber. Thousands 
of square miles are covered with thistles, 
which grow to a great height in their season. 
Cacti also forms great thickets. Peach and 
apple trees are abundant in some districts. 
The native fauna includes the puma, the 
jaguar, the tapir, the llama, the alpaca, the 
vicuna, armadillos, the rhea or nandu, a spe¬ 
cies of ostrich, &c. The climate is agree¬ 
able and healthy, 97° being about the high¬ 
est temperature experienced. Rain is 
less frequent than in the United King¬ 
dom. 

As a whole this vast country is very thinly 
inhabited, some parts of it as yet being very 
little known. The native Indians were 
never very numerous, and have given little 
trouble to the European settlers. Tribes of 
them yet in the savage state sU** inhabit 
the less known districts, and live by hunt¬ 
ing and fishing. Some of the Gran Chaco 
tribes are said to be very fierce, and Euro¬ 
pean travellers have been killed by them. 
The European element is strong in the 
republic, more than half the population 
being Europeans or of pure European de¬ 
scent. Large numbers of immigrants arrive 
from Southern Europe, the Italians having 


ARGENTITE-ARGONAUTS. 


the preponderance among those of foreign 
birth. The typical inhabitants of the 
pampas are the Gauchos, a race of half- 
breed cattle-rearersand horse-breakers; they 
are almost continually on horseback, gallop¬ 
ing over the plains, collecting their herds 
and droves, taming wild horses, or catching 
and slaughtering cattle. In such occupa¬ 
tions they require a marvellous dexterity in 
the use of the lasso and bolas. 

The river La Plata was discovered in 1512 
by the Spanish navigator Juan Diaz de. 
Solis, and the La Plata territory had been 
brought into the possession of Spain by the 
end of the sixteenth century. In 1810 the 
territory cast off the Spanish rule, and in 1816 
the independence of the United States of 
the Rio de la Plata was formally declared, 
but it was long before a settled government 
was established. The present constitution 
dates from 1853, being subsequently modi¬ 
fied. The executive power is vested in a 
president—elected by the representatives of 
the fourteen provinces for a term of six 
years. A national congress of two chambers 
—a senate and a house of deputies —wields 
the legislative authority, and the republic is 
making rapid advances in social and political 
life. The revenue for 1891 was $70,921,650; 
the expenditure, $79,008,141; the public 
debt, March 31, 1892, was officially stated 
as $365,515,698. In 1892 there were 7676 
miles of railway open. The external com¬ 
merce is important, the chief exports be¬ 
ing wool, skins, and hides, live animals, 
mutton, tallow, bones, corn, and flax. The 
imports are chiefly manufactured goods. 
The trade is largely with Britain and 
France, and is increasing rapidly, exports 
having advanced from $45,000,000 in 1876 
to $96,703,000 in 1891. In the latter year 
the imports were $67,166,000. The chief 
denomination of money is the silver dollar 
or peso, average value 96£ cents. Buenos 
Ayres is the capital of the State. Other 
towns are Cordova, Rosario, La Plata (a 
new city), Tucuman, Mendoza, and Corri- 
entes. The population of the republic, 
which is rapidly increasing, was returned 
in 1891 at 4,200,000. 

Ar'gentite, sulphide of silver, a blackish 
or lead-gray mineral, a valuable ore of silver 
found in the crystalline rocks of many coun¬ 
tries. 

Argillaceous Rocks are rocks in which 
clay prevails (including shales and slates). 

Argives (ar'jivz), or Argivi, the inhabi¬ 
tants of Argos; used by Homer and other 


ancient authors as a generic appellation for 
all the Greeks. 

Ar'go. See Argonauts. 

Argo 1 . See Argot. 

Ar'golis. See Argos. 

Ar'gonaut, a molluscous animal of the 
genus Argonauta, belonging to the dibran - 
chiate or two-gilled cuttle-fishes, distin¬ 
guished by the females possessing a single- 
chambered external shell, not organically 
connected with the body of the animal. 



Argonaut (Argonaxita Argo ). 


The males have no shell and are of much 
smaller size than the females. The shell is 
fragile, translucent, and boat-like in shape; 
it serves as the receptacle of the ova or eggs 
of the female, which sits in it with the 
respiratory tube or ‘ funnel ’ turned towards 
the carina or ‘keel.’ This famed mollusc 
swims only by ejecting water from its fun¬ 
nel, and it can crawl in a reversed position, 
carrying its shell over its back like a snail. 
The account of its floating on the surface of 
the sea, with its sail-shaped arms extended 
to catch the breeze, and with the six other 
arms as oars, is a mere fable. The argonaut, 
or paper-nautilus, must be carefully distin¬ 
guished from the pearly-nautilus or nautilus 
proper (Nautilus Pompilius). 

Argonauts, in the legendary history of 
Greece, those heroes who performed a 
hazardous voyage to Colchis, a far-distant 
country at the eastern extremity of the 
Euxine (Black Sea), with Jason in the ship 
Argo, for the purpose of securing a golden 
fleece, which was preserved suspended upon 
a tree, and under the guardianship of a sleep¬ 
less dragon. By the aid of Medea, daughter 
of the king of Colchis, Jason was enabled 
to seize the fleece, and, after many strange 
adventures, to reach his home at Iolcos in 

226 






























ARGO-NAVlS-ARGYt.fi. 


Thessaly. Among the Argonauts were 
Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Orpheus and 
Theseus. 

Argo-Navis, the southern constellation of 
the Ship, containing 9 clusters, 3 nebulae, 
13 double and 540 single stars, of which 
about 64 are visible. 

Argonne, a district of France, between 
the rivers Meuse, Marne, and Aisne, cele¬ 
brated for the campaign of Dumouriez 
against the Prussians in 1792, and for the 
military movements and actions which took 
place therein previous to the battle of Sedan, 
in 1870. 

Ar'gos, a town of Greece, in the north¬ 
east of the Peloponnesus, between the gulfs 
of Aigina and Nauplia or Argos. This 
town and the surrounding territory of 
Argolis were famous from the legendary 
period of Greek history onwards, the terri¬ 
tory containing, besides Argos, Mycenae, 
where Agamemnon ruled, with a kind of 
sovereignty, over all the Peloponnesus. 
Argolis and Corinth now form a noinarchy 
of the Kingdom of Greece, area 1447 sq. 
miles, pop. 136,081. 

Argos'toli, a city of the Ionian Islands, 
capital of Cephalonia, and the residence of 
a Greek bishop. Pop. 8000. 

Ar'gosy, a poetical name for a large mer¬ 
chant vessel; derived from Ragusa, a port 
which was formerly more celebrated than 
now, and whose vessels did a considerable 
trade with England. 

Argot (Fr.; ar-go), the jargon, slang, or 
peculiar phraseology of a class or profession; 
originally the conventional slang of thieves 
and vagabonds, invented for the purpose of 
disguise and concealment. 

Arguim, or Arguin (ar-gwim', ar-gwin'), 
a small island on the west coast of Africa, 
not far from Cape Blanco, formerly a centre 
of trade the possession of which was vio¬ 
lently disputed between the Portuguese, 
Dutch, English, and French. 

Argument, a term sometimes used as 
synonymous with the subject of a discourse, 
but more frequently appropriated to any 
kind of method employed for the purpose of 
confuting or at least silencing an opponent. 
Logicians have reduced arguments to a 
number of distinct heads, such as the argu- 
mentum ad judicium, which founds on solid 
proofs and addresses to the judgment; the 
argvmcntum ad verecundiam, which appeals 
to the modesty or bashfnlness of an oppo¬ 
nent by reminding him of the g eat names 
or authorities by whom the view disputed 

227 


by him is supported; the argumentum ad 
ignorantiam, the employment of some logical 
fallacy towards persons likely to be deceived 
by it; and the argumentum ad hominem , 
an argument which presses a man with 
consequences drawn from his own principles 
and concessions, or his own conduct. 

Ar'gus, in Greek mythology, a fabulous 
being, said to have had a hundred eyes, 
placed by Juno to guard Io. Hence ‘argus- 
eyed,’ applied to one who is exceedingly 
watchful. 

Argus-pheasant ( Argus giganteus), a 
large, beautiful, and very singular species of 
pheasant, found native in the south-east of 
Asia, more especially in Sumatra and some 
of the other islands. The males measure 
from 5 to 6 feet from the tip of the beak 
to the extremity of the tail, which has two 
greatly elongated central feathers. The 
plumage is exceedingly beautiful, the secon¬ 
dary quills of the wings, which are longer 
than the primary feathers, being each 
adorned with a series of ocellated or eye¬ 
like spots (whence the name—see Argus) 
of brilliant metallic hues. The general 
body plumage is brown. 

Argyle, or Argyll (ar-gl!), an extensive 
county in the south-west of the Highlands 
of Scotland, consisting partly of mainland 
and partly of islands belonging to the 
Hebrides group, the chief of which are 
Islay, Mull, Jura, Tiree, Coll, Rum, Lis- 
more, and Colonsay, with Iona and Staffa. 
On the land side the mainland is bounded 
north by Inverness; east by Perth and 
Dumbarton; elsewhere surrounded by the 
Firth of Clyde and its connections and the 
sea; area, 3255 sq. m. (or over 2,000,000 
acres), of which the islands comprise about 
1000 sq. m. It is greatly indented by arms 
of the sea, which penetrate far inland, the 
most important of these being Loch Sunart, 
Loch Linnhe (the extremities of which are 
Loch Eil and Loch Leven), Loch Etive, Loch 
Fyne, Loch Tarbert, Loch Riddon, Loch 
Striven, and Loch Long. The mainland is 
divided into the six districts of Northern 
Argyle, Lorn, Argyle, Cowal, Ivnapdale, 
and Kintyre; the two first being sub¬ 
divided into the sub-districts of Lochiel, 
Ardgour, Sunart, Ardnamurchan, Morven, 
and Appin. The county is exceedingly 
mountainous, the chief summits being Bi¬ 
dean nam-Bian (3766 ft.), Ben Laoigh (3708 
ft.), Ben Cruachan (3611 ft.), Benmore, in 
Mull (3185 ft.), the Paps of Jura (2565 ft.), 
and Ben Arthur or the Cobbler (2891 ft.). 



ARGYLE-ARIANS. 


There are several lakes, the principal of 
which is Loch Awe. Cattle and sheep are 
reared in numbers, and fishing is largely 
carried on, as is also the making of whisky. 
There is but little arable land. The chief 
minerals are slate, marble, limestone, and 
granite. County town, Inverary; others, 
Campbelton, Oban, and Dunoon. Pop. 
1891, 75,495. 

Argyle, Campbells of, a historic Scot¬ 
tish family, raised to the peerage in the 
person of Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow, 
in 1445. The more eminent members are: 
(1) Archibald, 2nd Earl, killed at the 
battle of Flodden, 1513.— Archibald, 5th 
Earl, attached himself to the party of Mary 
of Guise, and was the means of averting a 
collision between the Reformers and the 
French troops in 1559; was commissioner 
of regency after Mary’s abdication, but 
afterwards commanded her troops at the 
battle of Langside; diedl575.— Archibald, 
8th Earl and Marquis, born 1598 : a zeal¬ 
ous partisan of the Covenanters; created a 
marquis by Charles I. It was by his per¬ 
suasion that Charles II. visited Scotland, 
and was crowned at Scone in 1551. At 
the Restoration he was committed to the 
Tower, and afterwards sent to Scotland, 
where he was tried for high treason, and 
beheaded in 1661. —Archib\ld, 9th Earl, 
son of the preceding, served the king with 
great bravery at the battle of Dunbar, and 
was excluded from the general pardon by 
Cromwell in 1654. On the passing of the 
Test Act in 1681 he refused to take the 
required oath except with a reservation. 
For this he was tried and sentenced to 
death. He, however, escaped to Holland, 
from whence he returned with a view of 
aiding the Duke of Monmouth. His plan, 
however, failed, and he was taken and con¬ 
veyed to Edinburgh, where he was be¬ 
headed in 1685. —Archibald, 10th Earl 
and 1st Duke, son of the preceding, died 
1703 ; took an active part in the Revolution 
of 1688-89, which placed William and Mary 
on the throne, and was rewarded by several 
important appointments and the title of 
Duke.— John, 2nd Duke and Duke of 
Greenwich, son of the above, born 1678, 
died 1743; served under Marlborough at 
the battles of Ramilies, Oudenarde, and 
Malplaquet, and assisted at the sieges of 
Lisle and Ghent. He incurred consider¬ 
able odium in his own country for his ef¬ 
forts in promoting the union. In 1712 he 
had the military command in Scotland, 


and in 1715 he fought an indecisive battle 
with the Earl of Mar’s army at Sheriff- 
mu ir, near Dunblane, and forced the Pre¬ 
tender to quit the kingdom. He was long 
a supporter of Walpole, but his political ca¬ 
reer was full of intrigue. He is the Duke 
of Argyle in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian.— 
George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke, 
Baron Sundridge and Hamilton, was born 
in 1823. He early took a part in politics, 
especially in discussions regarding the Pres¬ 
byterian Church of Scotland. In 1852 he 
became lord privy seal under Lord Aber¬ 
deen, and again under Lord Palmerston in 
1859; postmaster-general in 1860; secre¬ 
tary for India from 1868 to 1874; again 
lord privy seal in 1880, but retired, being 
unable to agree with his colleagues on their 
Irish policy. He is author of The Reign 
of Law, Scotland as it Was and as it Is, &c. 
His eldest son, the Marquis of Lorne, 
married the Princess Louise, fourth daugh¬ 
ter of Queen Victoria, in 1871. 

Argyro-Castro (ar'gi-ro-), a town of Tur¬ 
key, in Albania, 40 miles north-west of 
Janina; built on three ridges intersected 
by deep ravines, across which are several 
bridges. Pop. about 6000. 

Argyropu'los, J ohannes, one of the prin¬ 
cipal revivers of Greek learning in the fif¬ 
teenth century. Born in Constantinople 
1415, died at Rome 1486. 

Aria, in music. See A ir. 

Ariadne (a-ri-ad'ne), in Greek mythology, 
a daughter of Minos, King of Crete. She 
gave Theseus a clue of thread to conduct 
him out of the labyrinth after his defeat of 
the Minotaur. Theseus abandoned her on 
the Isle of Naxos, where she was found by 
Bacchus, who married her. 

Aria'na, the ancient name of a large dis¬ 
trict in Asia, forming a portion of the 
Persian empire; bounded on the north by 
the provinces of Bactriana, Margiana, and 
Hyrcania; east by the Indus; south by 
the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; 
west by Media. 

Ariano (a-re-a'no), a town in South Italy, 
province of Avellino, 44 miles north-east of 
Naples, the seat of a bishop, with a hand¬ 
some cathedral. Pop. 14,347. 

Ar'ians, the adherents of the Alexandrian 
bishop Arius, who, about a.d. 318, promul¬ 
gated the doctrine that Christ was a created 
being inferior to God the Father in nature 
and dignity, though the first and noblest of 
all created beings; and also that the Holy 
Spirit is not God, but created by the power 

228 



ARICA-ARIOSTO. 


of the Son. These doctrines were con¬ 
demned by the Council of Nicaea in 325. 
Arius died in 336, and after his death his 
party gained considerable accessions, inclu¬ 
ding several emperors, and for a time held 
a strong position. Since the middle of the 
seventh century, however, the Arians have 
nowhere constituted a distinct sect, although 
similar opinions have been advanced by 
various theologians in modern times. 

Arica (a-re'ka), a seaport of Chili, 30 
miles s. of. Tacna; previous to 1882 it be¬ 
longed to Peru. It has suffered frequently 
from earthquakes, being in 1868 almost 
entirely destroyed, part of it being also 
submerged by an earthquake wave. Pop. 
about 4000. 

Arichat (-shat'), a seaport town and 
fishing station of Nova Scotia, on a small 
bay, s. coast of Madame Island. Pop. 
about 3000. 

Ariege (a-re-azh), a mountainous depart¬ 
ment of France, on the northern slopes of 
the Pyrenees, comprising the ancient count- 
ship of Foix and parts of Languedoc and 
Gascony. The principal rivers are the 
Ariege, Arize, and Salat, tributaries of the 
Garonne. Sheep and cattle are reared ; the 
arable land is small in quantity. Chief 
town,Foix. Area, 1890 square miles; pop. 
1891, 22,749. 

A'riel, the name of several personages 
mentioned in the Old Testament; in the 
demonology of the later Jews a spirit of 
the waters. In Shakspere’s Tempest, Ariel 
was the ‘tricksy spirit’ whom Prospero had 
in his service. 

Aries (a'-ri-ez; Latin), the Ram, a north¬ 
ern constellation of 156 stars, of which fifty 
are visible. It is the first of the twelve signs 
in the zodiac, which the sun enters at the 
vernal equinox, about the 21st of March. 
The first point in Aries is that where the 
equator cuts the ecliptic in the ascending 
node, and from which the right ascensions of 
heavenly bodies are reckoned on the equa¬ 
tor, and their longitudes upon the ecliptic. 
Owing to the precession of the equinoxes 
the sign Aries no longer cor¬ 
responds with the constellation 
Aries, which it did 2000 years 
ago. 

Ar'il, ArilTus, in some plants, 
as in the nutmeg, an extra 
Aril. covering of the seed, outside of 
the true seed-coats, proceeding 
from the placenta, partially investing the 
seed, and falling off spontaneously. It is 

229 


either succulent or cartilaginous, coloured, 
elastic, rough, or knotted. In the nutmeg 
it is known as mace. 

Arimas'pians, in ancient Greek traditions 
a people who lived in the extreme north¬ 
east of the ancient world. They were 
said to be one-eyed and to carry on a per¬ 
petual war with the gold-guarding griffins, 
whose gold they endeavoured to steal. 

Arimathse'a, a town of Palestine, identi¬ 
fied with the modern Ramleh , 22 m. w.N.w. 
of Jerusalem. 

Arion, an ancient Greek poet and musi¬ 
cian, born at Methymna, in Lesbos, flourished 
about B.c. 625. He lived at the court of 
Periander of Corinth, and afterwards visited 
Sicily and Italy. Returning from Taren- 
tum to Corinth with rich treasures, the 
avaricious sailors resolved to murder him. 
Apollo, however, having informed him in a 
dream of the impending danger, Arion in 
vain endeavoured to soften the hearts of 
the crew by the power of his music. He 
then threw himself into the sea, when one 
of a shoal of dolphins, which had been 
attracted by his music, received him on his 
back and bore him to land. The sailors, 
having returned to Corinth, were confron¬ 
ted by Arion, and convicted of their crime. 
The lyre of Arion, and the dolphin which 
rescued him, became constellations in the 
heavens. A fragment of a hymn to Posei¬ 
don, ascribed to Arion, is extant. 

Ariosto, Ludovi'co, one of the most 
celebrated poets of Italy, was born at 



Ludovico Ariosto. 


Reggio, in Lombardy, September 8, 1474, 
of a noble family; died June 6, 1533. His 
lyric poems in the Italian and Latin Ian- 









ARISMUS 


ARISTOLOCHIA. 


guages, distinguished for ease and elegance 
of style, introduced him to the notice of 
the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, son of Duke 
Ercole I. of Ferrara. In 1503 Ippolito 
employed him in his service, used his coun¬ 
sel in the most important affairs, and took 
him with him on a journey to Hungary. 
In this service he began and finished, in 
ten or eleven years, his immortal poem, the 
Orlando Furioso, which was published in 
1515, and immediately became highly popu¬ 
lar. He afterwards entered the service of 
Alfonso I., Duke of Ferrara, the cardinal’s 
brother, a lover of the arts, who put much 
confidence in him. After quelling distur¬ 
bances that had broken out in the wild and 
mountainous Garfagnana, he returned to 
Ferrara, where he employed himself in the 
composition of his comedies, and in putting 
the last touches to his Orlando. The 
Orlando Furioso is a continuation of the Or¬ 
lando Innamorata of Bojardo, details the 
chivalrous adventures of the paladins of the 
age of Charlemagne, and extends to forty- 
six cantos. The best English translation is 
that of Rose. 

Aristseus, in Greek mythology, son of 
Apollo and Cyrene, the introducer of bee¬ 
keeping. 

Aristarchus (a-ris-tar'kus), an ancient 
Greek grammarian, born at Samothrace 
B.C. 160, died at Cyprus B.c. 88. He criti¬ 
cised Homer’s poems with the greatest 
acuteness and ability, endeavouring to re¬ 
store the text to its genuine state, and to 
clear it of all interpolations and corruptions; 
hence the phrase, Aristarchian criticism. 
His edition of Homer furnished the basis 
of all subsequent ones. 

Aristarchus, an ancient Greek astrono¬ 
mer belonging to Samos, flourished between 
280 and 264 B.c., and first asserted the 
revolution of the earth about the sun; also 
regarded as the inventor of the sun-dial. 

Aris'teas, a personage of ancient Greek 
legend, represented to have lived over many 
centuries, disappearing and reappearing by 
turns. 

Aristides (a-ris-tl'dez), a statesman of 
. ancient Greece, for his strict integrity sur- 
named the Just. He was one of the ten 
generals of the Athenians when they fought 
with the Persians at Marathon, b.c. 490. 
Next year he was eponymous archon, and 
in this office enjoyed such popularity that 
he excited the jealousy of Themistocles, 
who succeeded in procuring his banishment 
by the ostracism (about 483). Three years 


after, when Xerxes invaded Greece with a 
large army, the Athenians hastened to recall 
him, and Themistocles now admitted him to 
his confidence and councils. In the battle of 
Plataea (479) he commanded the Athenians, 
and had a great share in gaining the victory. 
To defray the expenses of the Persian war 
he persuaded the Greeks to impose a tax, 
which should be paid into the hands of an 
officer appointed by the states collectively, 
and deposited at Delos. The confidence 
which was felt in his integrity appeared in 
their intrusting him with the office of ap¬ 
portioning the contribution. He died at an 
advanced age about B.c. 468, so poor that 
he was buried at the public expense. 

Aristip'pus, a disciple of Socrates, and 
founder of a philosophical school among 
the Greeks, which was called the Cyrenaic, 
from his native city Cyrene, in Africa; 
flourished 380 B.c. His moral philosophy 
differed widely from that of Socrates, and 
was a science of refined voluptuousness. 
His fundamental principles were—that all 
human sensations may be reduced to two, 
pleasure and pain. Pleasure is a gentle, and 
pain a violent emotion. All living beings 
seek the former and avoid the latter. Hap¬ 
piness is nothing but a continued pleasure, 
composed of separate gratifications; and as 
it is the object of all human exertions we 
should abstain from no kind of pleasure. 
Still we should always be governed by taste 
and reason in our enjoyments. His doc¬ 
trines were taught only by his daughter 
ArSte, and by his grandson Aristippus the 
younger, by whom they were systematized. 
Other Cyrenaics compounded them into a 
particular doctrine of pleasure, and are 
hence called Hedonici. The time of his death 
is unknown. His writings are lost. 

Aristoc'racy (Greek aristos, best, Jcratos, 
rule), a form of government by which the 
wealthy and noble, or any small privileged 
class, rules over the rest of the citizens; now 
mostly applied to the nobility or chief per¬ 
sons in a state. 

Aristogeiton (-gl'ton), a citizen of Athens, 
whose name is rendered famous by a con¬ 
spiracy (514 B.c.) formed in conjunction 
with his friend Harmodius against the 
tyrants Hippias and Hipparchus, the sons 
of Pisistratus. Both Aristogeiton and Har¬ 
modius lost their lives through their at¬ 
tempts to free the country, and were reck¬ 
oned martyrs of liberty. 

Aristolochia (-ld'ki-a), a genus of plants, 
the type of the order Aristolochiacese, which 

230 



ARISTOTLE. 


ARISTOPHANES 


consists of dicotyledonous monochlamydeous 
plants, with an inferior 3-6-celled fruit, 
principally inhabiting the hotter parts of 
the world, and in many cases used medi¬ 
cinally on account of their tonic and stimu¬ 
lating properties. r l he genus has emmena- 
gogic qualities, especially the European 
species A. rotunda , A. longa, and A. Cle- 
matitis. A. bracteata is used in India as 
an anthelminthic; A. odoratissima, a West 
Indian species, is a valuable bitter and 
alexipharmic. A. serpentaria is the Vir¬ 
ginian snake-root popularly regarded as a 
remedy for snake bites. 

Aristophanes (-tof'a-nez), the greatest 
comic poet of ancient Greece, born at Athens 
probably about the year 444 B.c. ; died not 
later than B.c. 380. Little is known of bis 
life. He appeared as a poet in B.c. 427, and 
having indulged in some sarcasms on the 
powerful demagogue Cleon, was ineffectu¬ 
ally accused by the latter of having unlaw¬ 
fully assumed the title of an Athenian 
citizen. He afterwards revenged himself 
on C leon in his comedy of the Knights, in 
which he himself acted the part of Cleon, 
because no actor had the courage to do it. 
Of fifty-four comedies which he composed 
eleven only remain; believed to be the 
flower of the ancient comedy, and distin¬ 
guished by wit, humour, and poetry, as also 
by grossness. In them there is constant 
reference to the manners, actions, and pub¬ 
lic characters of the day, the freedom of the 
old Greek comedy allowing an unbounded 
degree of personal and political satire. The 
names of his extant plays are Acharnians, 
Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Birds, Lysi- 
strata, Thesmophoriazusae, Frogs, Ecclesia- 
suzse, and Plutus. 

Ar'istotle (Gr. A ristot'eles), a distin¬ 
guished philosopher and naturalist of an¬ 
cient Greece, the founder of the Peripatetic 
school of philosophy, was born in 384 B.c. 
at Staglra, in Macedonia, died at Chaleis, 
B.c. 322. His father, Nicomachus, was 
physician to Amyntas II., king of Mace¬ 
donia, and claimed to be descended from 
Htlsculapius. Aristotle had lost his parents 
before he came, at about the age of seven¬ 
teen, to Athens to study in the school of 
Plato. With that philosopher he remained 
for twenty years, became pre-eminent among 
his pupils, and was known as the ‘ Intellect 
of the School.’ Upon the death of Plato, 
348 B.C., be took up his residence at Atar- 
neus, in Mysia, on the invitation of his 
former pupil Hermeias, the ruler of that 

231 


city, on whose assassination by the Per¬ 
sians, 343 B.c., he fled to Mitylene with his 
wife Pythia, the niece of Hermeias. Dur¬ 
ing his residence at Mitylene he received 
an invitation from Philip of Macedon to 
superintend the education of his son Alex¬ 
ander, then in his fourteenth year. This 
relationship between the great philosopher 
and the future conqueror continued for five 
or six years, during which the prince was in¬ 
structed in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, logic, 
ethics, and politics, and in those branches 
of physics which had even then made some 
considerable progress. On Alexander suc¬ 
ceeding to the throne Aristotle continued 
to live with him as his friend and councillor 
till he set out on his Asiatic campaign 
(334 B.c. ). He returned to Athens and 
established his school in the Lyceum, a 
gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo 
Lyceius, which was assigned to him by the 
state. He delivered his lectures in the 
wooded walks of the Lyceum while walking 
up and down with his pupils. From the 
action itself, or more probably from the 
name of the walks ( peripatoi ), his school 
was called Peripatetic. Pupils gathered to 
him from all parts of Greece, and his school 
became by far the most popular in Athens. 
The statement that he had two circles of 
pupils, the exoteric and the esoteric has 
given rise to much controversy. By some it 
has been held that Aristotle published dur¬ 
ing his lifetime popular discourses with a 
view to make way for his doctrines in 
Athenian society, then impregnated with 
Platonic theories, and that these are called 
exoteric in contradistinction to those in 
which are embodied his matured opinions. 
It was during the time of his teaching at 
Athens that Aristotle is believed to have 
composed the great bulk of his works. On 
the death of Alexander a revolution occurred 
in Athens hostile to the Macedonian in¬ 
terests with which Aristotle was identified. 
He therefore retired to C halcis, where he 
soon after died. According to Strabo he 
bequeathed all his works to Theophras¬ 
tus, who, with other disciples of Aristotle, 
amended and continued them. They after¬ 
wards passed through various hands, till, 
about 50 b.c., Andronicus of Rhodes put the 
various fragments together and classified 
them according to a systematic arrange¬ 
ment. Many of the books bearing his name 
are spurious, others are of doubtful genuine¬ 
ness. The whole are generally divided into 
logical, theoretical, and practical. The logi- 



ARISTOXENUS - 

cal works are comprehended under the title 
Organon (instrument). The theoretical are 
divided into physics, mathematics, and 
metaphysics. The physical works (includ¬ 
ing those on natural history) are on the 
General Principles of Physical Science, 
The Heavens, Generation and Destruction, 
Meteorology, Natural History of Animals, 
On the Parts of Animals, On the Genera¬ 
tion of Animals, On the Locomotion of 
Animals, On the Soul, On Memory, Sleep 
and Waking, Dreams, Divination. In ma¬ 
thematics there are two treatises, On Indi¬ 
visible Lines and Mechanical Problems. 
The Metaphysics consist of fourteen books; 
the title ( r l a meta ta Physika, ‘ the things 
following the Physics ’) is the invention of 
an editor. The practical works embrace 
ethics, politics, economics, and treatises on 
art, and comprise the Nicomachfean Ethics 
(so called because dedicated to his son Ni- 
comachus), the Politics, (Economics, Poetry, 
and Rhetoric. Among the lost works are 
the dialogues and others to which the term 
exoteric is applied, and which were published 
during Aristotle’s lifetime. His style is de¬ 
void of grace and elegance. His works were 
first printed in a Latin translation, with the 
commentaries of Averroes, at Venice in 
1489; the first Greek edition was that of 
Aldus Manutius (five vols. 1495-98). For 
an account of the philosophy of Aristotle 
see Peripatetics. 

Aristox'enus, an ancient Greek musician 
and philosopher of Tarentum, born about 
B.c. 324. He studied music under his father 
Mnesias, and philosophy under Aristotle, 
whose successor he aspired to be. He en¬ 
deavoured to apply his musical knowledge 
to philosophy, and especially to the science 
of mind, but it only appears to have fur¬ 
nished him with far-fetched analogies and 
led him into a kind of materialism. We have 
a work on the Elements of Harmony by him. 

Arith metic (Greek arithmos , number) is 
primarily the science of numbers. As op¬ 
posed to algebra it is the practical part 
of the science. Although the processes of 
arithmetical operations are often highly 
complicated, they all resolve themselves 
into the repetition of four primary opera¬ 
tions, addition, subtraction, multiplication, 
and division. Of these the two latter are 
only complex forms of the two former, and 
subtraction again is merely a reversal of 
the process of addition. Little or nothing 
is known as to the origin and invention of 
arithmetic, Some elementary conception of 


— ARITHMETIC. 

it is in all probability coeval with the first 
dawn of human intelligence. In conse¬ 
quence of their rude methods of numera¬ 
tion, the science made but small advance 
among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and 
Romans, and it was not until the introduc¬ 
tion of the decimal scale of notation and 
the Arabic, or rather Indian, numerals into 
Europe that any great progress can be 
traced. In this scale of notation every 
number is expressed by means of the ten 
digits, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, by giving 
each digit a local as well as its proper or 
natural value. The value of every digit 
increases in a tenfold proportion from the 
right towards the left; the distance of any 
figure from the right indicating the power 
of 10, and the digit itself the number of 
those powers intended to be expressed: thus 
3464 = 3000 + 400 + 60 + 4 = 3 x 10 3 + 4 x 
10 2 + 6xl0 + 4. The earliest arithmetical 
signs appear to have been hieroglyphical, 
but the Egyptian hieroglyphics were too 
diffuse to be of any arithmetical value. 
The units were successive strokes to the 
number required, the ten an open circle, 
the hundred a curled palm-leaf, the thou¬ 
sand a lotus flower, ten thousand a bent 
finger. The letters of the alphabet afforded 
a convenient mode of representing figures, 
and were used accordingly by the Chal¬ 
deans, Hebrews, and Greeks. The first 
nine letters of the Hebrew alphabet repre¬ 
sented the units, the second nine tens, the 
remaining four together with five repeated 
with additional marks, hundreds; the same 
succession of letters with added points was 
repeated for thousands, tens of thousands, 
and hundreds of thousands. The Greeks 
followed the same system up to tens of 
thousands. They wrote the different classes 
of numbers in succession as we do, and they 
transferred operations performed on units 
to numbers in higher places; but the use of 
different signs for the different ranks clearly 
shows a want of full perception of the value 
of place as such. They adopted the letter M 
as a sign for 10,000 and by combining this 
mark with their other numerals they could 
note numbers as high as 100,000,000. The 
Roman numerals which are still used in 
marking dates or numbering chapters were 
almost useless for purposes of computation. 
From one to four were represented by ver¬ 
tical strokes I, II, III, Mil, five by V, ten 
by X, fifty by L, one hundred by C, after¬ 
wards C, five hundred by D, a thousand 
by M. These signs were derived from each 

232 



ARIZONA. 


ARITHMETICAL 


other according to particular rules, thus 
V was the half of X, A being also used; 
L was likewise the half of [, M was 
artistically written M and clo, and Io, after¬ 
wards D, became five hundred, ccl repre¬ 
sented 5000, ccloo 10,000 Iodo 50,000, 
ccclooo 100,000. They w’ere also com¬ 
pounded by addition and subtraction, thus 
IV stood for four, VI for six, XXX for 
thirty, X L for forty, LX for sixty. Arith¬ 
metic is divided into abstract and practical; 
the former comprehends notation, numera¬ 
tion, addition, subtraction, multiplication, 
division, measures and multiples, fractions, 
powers and roots : the latter treats of the 
yombinations and practical applications of 
these and the so-called rules, such as reduc¬ 
tion, compound addition, subtraction, multi¬ 
plication, and division, proportion, interest, 
profit and loss, &c. Another division is 
integral and fractional arithmetic, the 
former treating of integers, or whole num¬ 
bers, and the latter of fractions. Decimal 
fractions were invented in the sixteenth 
century, and logarithms, embodying the last 
great advance in the science, in the seven¬ 
teenth century. 

Arithmetical, pertaining to arithmetic 
or its operations.— Arithmetical mean, the 
middle term of three quantities in arith¬ 
metical progression, or half the sum of any 
two proposed numbers; thus 11 is the arith¬ 
metical mean to 8 and 14.— Arithmetical 
progression, a series of numbers increasing 
or decreasing by a common difference, as 
1, 3, 5, 7, &c.— Arithmetical signs, certain 
symbols used in arithmetic, and indicating 
processes or facts. The common signs used 
in arithmetic are the following: + signify¬ 
ing that the numbers between which it is 
placed are to be added; - that the second 
is to be subtracted from the first; x that 
the one is to be multiplied by the other; 
-r that the former is to be divided by the 
latter; = signifies that the one number is 
equal to the other; : : : : are the signs 
placed between the members of a propor¬ 
tional series, as 4 : 6 : : 8 : 12. A small 
figure placed on the right hand of another 
at the top signifies the corresponding power 
of the number beside which it is placed, as 
5 2 , 4 3 , meaning the square of 5 and the cube 
of 4. V placed before or over a number signi¬ 
fies the square root of that number; with a 
figure it signifies the root of a higher power, 
as J/, which means cube root. A period 
placed to the left of a series of figures in¬ 
dicates that they are decimal fractions. 

233 


A'rius, the originator of the A rian heresy. 
See Arians. 

Arizo'na, a territory of the United States, 
bounded south by Mexico, west by Cali¬ 
fornia and Nevada (the river Colorado form¬ 
ing the greater part of the boundary), north 
by Utah, and east by New Mexico; area, 
113,020 square miles. The surface is gen¬ 
erally mountainous, but many fertile and 
well-watered valleys lie between the ridges. 
Part of the surface consists of deserts often 



Marble Canyon, Colorado. 


entirely destitute of vegetation. The terri¬ 
tory belongs to the basin of the Colorado, 
which passes through a portion of it, besides 
forming the boundary; while the Gila and 
Little Colorado, tributaries of the Colorado, 
traverse it from east to west. The can¬ 
yons of the Colorado form a wonderful 
feature, the river flowing for hundreds of 
miles in a deep rocky channel with walls 
rising perpendicularly to the height of 1500 
to 6000 feet. In some parts timber is 
plentiful. The rainfall is small, and irri- 






































ARJISH DAGH- 

gation has been employed for agricultural 
purposes. Large tracts of elevated land 
have been found excellently adapted as 
pastures for sheep and cattle. The territory 
is rich in gold, silver, and other minerals, 
and mining is largely carried on, much silver 
and gold being now obtained. The capital 
is Phoenix. The territory was organized 
in Feb., 1863. Pop. 59,620, exclusive of 
Apaches and other Indians, who have fre¬ 
quently given much trouble to the settlers. 
The Southern Pacific Railway now traverses 
the territory. 

Arjish Dagh, the loftiest peak of the 
peninsula of Asia Minor, at the western 
extremity of the Anti-Taurus Range, 13,150 
feet; an exhausted volcano; on the N. and 
N.E. slopes are extensive glaciers. 

Ark, the name applied in our translation 
of the Bible to the boat or floating edifice 
in which Noah resided during the flood or 
deluge; to the floating vessel of bulrushes 
in which the infant Moses was laid; and 
to the chest in which the tables of the law 
were preserved—the ark of the covenant. 
This was made of shittim-wood, overlaid 
within and without with gold, about 3| feet 
long by 2| feet high and broad, and over it 
were placed the golden covering or mercy- 
seat and the two cherubim. It was placed 
in the sanctuary of the temple of Solomon; 
before his time it was kept in the taber¬ 
nacle, and w r as moved about as circum¬ 
stances dictated. At the captivity it appears 
to have been either lost or destroyed. 

Arkansas (ar'kan-sa, Indian name), one 
of the United States of America, bounded 
north by Missouri; east by the Mississippi, 
which separates it from the states of Mis¬ 
sissippi and Tennessee; south by Louisiana 
and Texas; and west by the Indian Terri¬ 
tory and Texas; area, 53,850 square miles. 
The surface in the east is low, flat, and 
swampy, densely wooded, and subject to 
frequent inundations from the numerous 
streams which water it. Towards the centre 
it becomes more diversified, presenting many 
undulating slopes and hills of moderate 
elevation. In the west it rises still higher, 
being traversed by a range of hills called 
the Ozark, which attains a height of 2000 
feet, some peaks rising to 3000. In various 
parts the prairies are of great extent; the 
forests also are very magnificent, containing 
fine specimens, principally of oak, hickory, 
ash, cotton, linden, maple, locust, and pine. 
The principal rivers, all tributaries of the 
Mississippi, are the Arkansas, the Red 


— ARKWRIGHT. 

River, the St. Francis, and the "Washita. 
Near the centre of the state are warm 
springs, much resorted to for chronic rheu¬ 
matic and paralytic affections. The climate, 
though on the whole mild, is subject to great 
extremes of heat and cold, and in the 
lower districts is unhealthy to new settlers. 
The staple products are cotton and maize; 
fruit is tolerably abundant. Many districts 
are admirably adapted for grazing, and great 
numbers of excellent cattle are reared. 
Arkansas was colonized as early as 1685 by 
the French. As part of Louisiana it was 
purchased by the United States in 1803. 
It was erected into a separate territory in 
1819, and admitted into the Union in 1836. 
It was one of the seceding states. The 
capital is Little Rock. Pop. in 1890, 
1,128,179, of whom 311,227 were coloured. 

Arkansas, a river of the United States, 
which gives its name to the above state, 
the largest affluent of the Mississippi after 
the Missouri. It rises in the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, about lat. 39“ N.', Ion. 107 J w., flows 
in a general south-easterly direction through 
Colorado, Kansas, the Indian Territory, and 
fallsinto the Mississippi. Length 2170 miles. 

Arkansas City, Cowley county, Kansas, 
the centre of a rich agricultural district, 
and lumber trade. Pop. 1890, 8354. 

Ark'low, a town in Ireland, county 
Wicklow, on the right bank of the Avoca, 
which falls into the sea about 500 yards 
below the town; the scene of a severe fight 
during the rebellion of 1798. Fishing is the 
chief industry. Pop. 4777. 

Arkwright, Sir Richard, famous for 
his inventions in cotton-spinning, was born 
at Preston, in Lancashire, in 1732; died 
1792. The youngest of thirteen children, 
he was bred to the trade of a barber. 
When about thirty-five years of age he gave 
himself up exclusively to the subject of in¬ 
ventions for spinning cotton. The thread 
spun by Hargreaves’ jenny could not be used 
except as weft, being destitute of the firm¬ 
ness or hardness required in the longitudinal 
threads or warp. But Arkwright supplied 
this deficiency by the invention of the spin¬ 
ning-frame, which spins a vast number of 
threads of any degree of fineness and hard¬ 
ness, leaving the operator merely to feed 
the machine with cotton and to join the 
threads -when they happen to break. His 
invention introduced the system of spinning 
by rollers, the carding, or roving as it is 
technically termed (that is, the soft, loose 
strip of cotton), passing through one pair of 

234 



ARM. 


ARLBERG 

rollers, and being received by a second pair, 
which are made to revolve with (as the case 
may be) three, four, or five times the velocity 
of the first pair. By this contrivance the 



Sir Richard Arkwright. 


roving is drawn out into a thread of the 
desired degree of tenuity and hardness. 
His inventions being brought into a pretty 
advanced state, Arkwright removed to Not¬ 
tingham in 1768 in order to avoid the at¬ 
tacks of the same lawless rabble that had 
driven Hargreaves out of Lancashire. Here 
his operations were at first greatly fettered 
by a want of capital; but two gentlemen of 
means having entered into partnership with 
him, the necessary funds were obtained, 
and Arkwright erected his first mill, which 
was driven by horses, at Nottingham, and 
took out a patent for spinning by rollers in 
1769. As the mode of working the ma¬ 
chinery by horse power was found too ex¬ 
pensive he built a second factory on a much 
larger scale at Cromford, in Derbyshire, in 
1771, the machinery of which was turned 
by a water-wheel. Having made several 
additional discoveries and improvements in 
the processes of carding, roving, and spin¬ 
ning, he took out a fresh patent for the 
whole in 1775, and thus completed a series 
of the most ingenious and complicated ma¬ 
chinery. Notwithstanding a series of law¬ 
suits in defence of his patent rights, and 
the destruction of his property by mobs, he 
amassed a large fortune. He was knighted 
by George III. in 1786. 

Arlberg (arl'ber^), a branch of the Rhaetian 
Alps, in the west of Tirol, between it and Vor- 
arlberg, pierced by the third longest railway 
tunnel in the world. It is 6^ miles long, and 

235 


was finished in November, 1883, and con¬ 
nects the valley of the Inn with that of the 
Rhine, and the Austrian railway system 
with the Swiss railways. 

Arles (arl; anc. A relate), a town of south¬ 
ern France, dep. Bouches du Rhone, 17 
miles south-east of Nismes. It was an 
important town at the time of Caesar’s in¬ 
vasion, and under the later emperors it 
became one of the most flourishing towns 
on the further side of the Alps. It still 
possesses numerous ancient remains, of 
which the most conspicuous are those of a 
Roman amphitheatre, which accommodated 
24,000 spectators. It has a considerable 
trade, manufactures of silk, &c., and fur¬ 
nishes a market for the surrounding country. 
Pop. 13,291. 

Arlington, Henry Bennet, Earl of, 
member of the Cabal ministry, and one of 
the scheming creatures of Charles II., born 
1618, died 1685. He is supposed to have 
lived and died a Roman Catholic. 

Arlington, Mass., 6 miles from Boston, 
seat of Mount Hope Hospital for the In¬ 
sane. It has several small factories and a 
savings bank. Pop. 1890, 5625. 

Arm, the upper limb in man, connected 
with the thorax or chest by means of the 
scapula or shoulder-blade, and the clavicle 
or collar-bone. It consists of three bones, 
the arm-bone ( humer¬ 
us}, and the two 
bones of the fore¬ 
arm (radius and 
ulna), and it is 
connected with 
the bones of the 
hand by the 
carpus or wrist. 

The head or 
upper end 


Humerus. 


Elbow-joint. 



L.. Shoulder- 
joint. 


Radius. 


Ulna. 


Bones of the Arm. 


of the arm-bone fits into the hollow called 
the glenoid cavity of the scapula, so as to 
form a joint of the ball-and-socket kind, 
allowing great freedom of movement to 
the limb. The lower end of the humerus 
is broadened out by a projection on both 







ARMADA-ARMAGEDDON. 


the outer and inner sides (the outer and 
inner condyles), and has a pulley-like sur¬ 
face for articulating with the fore-arm to 
form the elbow-joint. This joint somewhat 
resembles a hinge, allowing of movement 
only in one direction. The ulna is the 
inner of the two bones of the fore-arm. It 
is largest at the upper end, where it has two 
processes, the coronoid and the olecranon , 
with a deep groove between to receive the 
humerus. The radius—the outer of the two 
bones—is small at the upper and expanded 
at the lower end, where it forms part of the 
wrist-joint. The muscles of the upper arm 
are either flexors or extensors, the former 
serving to bend the arm, the latter to 
straighten it by means of the elbow-joint. 
The main flexor is the biceps, the large 
muscle which may be seen standing out in 
front of the arm when a weight is raised. 
The chief opposing muscle of the biceps is 
the triceps. The muscles of the fore-arm 
are, besides flexors and extensors, pronators 
and supinators, the former turning the hand 
palm downwards, the latter turning it up¬ 
wards. The same fundamental plan of 
structure exists in the limbs of all verte¬ 
brate animals. 

Arma'da, the Spanish name for any large 
naval force; usually applied to the Spanish 
fleet vaingloriously designated the Invin¬ 
cible Armada, intended to act against Eng¬ 
land A.D. 1588. It was under the command 
of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, and con¬ 
sisted of 130 great war vessels, larger and 
stronger than any belonging to the English 
fleet, with 30 smaller ships of war, and 
carried 19,295 marines, 8460 sailors, 2088 
slaves, and 2630 cannons. It had scarcely 
quitted Lisbon on May 29, 1588, when it 
was scattered by a storm, and had to be 
refitted in Corunna. It was to co-operate 
with a land force collected in Flanders 
under the Prince of Parma, and to unite 
with this it proceeded through the English 
Channel towards Calais. In its progress 
it was attacked by the English fleet under 
Lord Howard, who, wdth his lieutenants, 
Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, endea¬ 
voured by dexterous seamanship and the 
discharge of well-directed volleys of shot 
to destroy or capture the vessels of the 
enemy. The great lumbering Spanish 
vessels suffered severely from their smaller 
opponents, which most of their shot 
missed. Arrived at length off Dunkirk, 
the armada w 7 as becalmed, thrown into con¬ 
fusion by fire ships, and many of the Span¬ 


ish vessels destroyed or taken. The Duke 
of Medina-Sidonia, owing to the severe 
losses, at last resol\ ed to abandon the enter¬ 
prise, and conceived the idea of reconveying 
his fleet to Spain by a voyage round the 
north of Great Britain; but storm after 
storm assailed his ships, scattering them in 
all directions, and sinking many. Some 
went down on the cliffs of Norway, others 
in the open sea, others on the Scottish coast. 
About thirty vessels reached the Atlantic 
Ocean, and of these several were driven on 
the coast of Ireland and wrecked, in all, 
seventy-two large vessels and over 10,000 
men were lost. 

Armadillo (genus Dasypus), an edentate 
mammal peculiar to South America, con¬ 
sisting of various species, belonging to a 
family intermediate between the sloths and 
ant-eaters. They are covered with a hard 
bony shell, divided into belts, composed of 
small separate plates like a coat of mail, 



Yellow-footed Armadillo (Dasypus Encoubert). 


flexible everywhere except on the fore¬ 
head, shoulders, and haunches, where it is 
not movable. The belts are connected by 
a membrane, which enables the animal to 
roll itself up like a hedgehog. These ani¬ 
mals burrow in the earth, where they lie 
during the daytime, seldom going abroad 
except at night. They are of different 
sizes; the largest, Dasypus fjiyas, being 3 
feet in length without the tail, and the 
smallest only 10 inches. They subsist 
chiefly on fruits and roots, sometimes on 
insects and flesh. They are inoffensive, and 
their flesh is esteemed good food.—There is 
a genus of isopodous (’rustacea called Ar¬ 
madillo, consisting of animals allied to the 
w'ood-lice, capable of rolling themselves into 
a ball. 

Armageddon (-ged'donl, the great battle¬ 
field of the Old Testament, where the chief 
conflicts took place between the Israelites 
and their enemies—the table-land of Es- 
draelon in Galilee and Samaria, in the 
centre of wLich stood the town Megiddo, 
on the site of the modern Lejjun: use<J 

236 






ARMAGH - 

figuratively in the Apocalypse to signify 
the place of ‘ the battle of the great day of 
God.’ 

Armagh (ar-ma'), a county of Ireland, 
in the province of Ulster; surrounded by 
Monaghan, Tyrone, Lough Neagh, Down, 
and Lowth: area, 328,086 acres, of which 
about a half is under tillage. The north¬ 
west of the county is undulating and fer¬ 
tile. The northern part, bordering on Lough 
Neagh, consists principally of extensive 
bogs. On the southern border is a range 
of barren hills. The chief rivers are the 
Blackwater, which separates it from Tyrone; 
the Upper Bann, which discharges itself 
into Lough Neagh; and the Callan, which 
falls into the Blackwater. There are se¬ 
veral small lakes. The manufacture of 
linen is carried on very extensively. Ar¬ 
magh, Lurgan, and Portadown are the chief 
towns. The county sends three members 
to parliament. Pop. 143,056.—The county 
town, Armagh, formerly a parliamentary 
borough, is situated partly on a hill, about 
half a mile from the Callan. It has a 
Protestant cathedral crowning the hill, a 
Gothic building dating from the eighth 
century, repaired and beautified recently; 
a new Roman Catholic cathedral in the 
pointed Gothic style, and various public 
buildings. It is the see of an archbishop 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who 
is primate of all Ireland, and is a place of 
great antiquity. Pop. 1891, 8303. 

Armagnac (ar-ma-nyak), an ancient ter¬ 
ritory of France, in the province of Gascony, 
some of the counts of which hold prominent 
places in the history of France. Bernard 
VII., son of John II., surnamed the Hunch¬ 
back, succeeded his brother, John III., in 
1391, and was called to court by Isabella 
of Bavaria, with the view of heading the 
Orleans in opposition to the Burgundian 
faction, where he no sooner gained the as¬ 
cendency than he compelled the queen to 
appoint him Constable of France. He 
showed himself a merciless tyrant, and 
became so generally execrated that the 
Duke of Burgundy, to whom Isabella had 
turned for help, found little difficulty in 
gaining admission into Paris, and even seiz¬ 
ing the person of Armagnac, who was cast 
into prison in 1418, when the exasperated 
populace burst in and killed him and his 
followers. John V., grandson of the above, 
who succeeded in 1450, made himself noto¬ 
rious for his crimes. He was assassinated 
in his castle of Lectoure in 1473 by an agent 

237 


-ARMENIA. 

of Louis XI., against whom he was holding 
out. 

Ar'mature, a term applied to the piece 
of soft iron which is placed across the poles 
of permanent or electro-magnets for the 
purpose of receiving and concentrating the 
attractive force. In the case of permanent 
magnets it is also important for preserving 
their magnetism when not in use, and hence 
it is sometimes termed the keeper. It pro¬ 
duces this effect in virtue of the well-known 
law of induction, by which the armature, 
when placed near or across the poles of the 
magnet, is itself converted into a temporary 
magnet with reversed poles, and these, re¬ 
acting upon the permanent magnet, keep its 
particles in a state of constant magnetic 
tension, or, in other words, in that con¬ 
strained position which is supposed to con¬ 
stitute magnetism. A horse shoe magnet 
should therefore never be laid aside without 
its armature; and in the case of straight 
bar-magnets two should be placed parallel 
to each other, with their poles reversed, and 
a keeper or armature across them at both 
ends. The term is also applied to the core 
and coil of the electro-magnet, which re¬ 
volves before the poles of the permanent 
magnet in the magneto-electric machine. 

Armed Neutrality, the condition of af¬ 
fairs when a nation assumes a threatening 
position, and maintains an armed force to 
repel any aggression on the part of belli¬ 
gerent nations between which it is neutral. 
The term is applied in history to a coalition 
entered into by the northern powers in 1780 
and again in 1800. 

Armed Ship, a ship which is taken into 
the service of a government for a particular 
occasion, and armed like a ship of war. 

Arme'nia, a mountainous country of 
Western Asia, not now politically existing, 
but of great historical interest, as the ori¬ 
ginal seat of one of the oldest civilized 
peoples in the world. It is now shared be¬ 
tween Turkey, Persia, and Russia. It has 
an area of about 137,000 square miles, and 
is intersected by the Euphrates, which di¬ 
vides it into the ancient divisions, Armenia 
Major and Armenia Minor. The country 
is an elevated plateau, inclosed on several 
sides by the ranges of Taurus and Anti- 
Taurus, and partly occupied by other moun¬ 
tains, the loftiest of which is Ararat. 
Several important rivers take their rise in 
Armenia, namely, the Kur or Cyrus, and 
its tributary the Aras or A raxes, flowing 
east to the Caspian Sea; the Halys or 



ARMENIA - 

Kizil-Irmak, flowing noi’th to the Black 
Sea; and the Tigris and Euphrates, which 
flow into the Persian Gulf. The chief lakes 
are Van and Urumiyah. The climate is 
rather severe. The soil is on the whole 
productive, though in many places it would 
be quite barren were it not for the great 
care taken to irrigate it. Wheat, barley, 
tobacco, hemp, grapes, and cotton are raised; 
and in some of the valleys apricots, peaches, 
mulberries, and walnuts are grown. The 
inhabitants are chiefly of the genuine Ar¬ 
menian stock, a branch of the Aryan or 
Indo-European race; but besides them, in 
consequence of the repeated subjugation of 
the country, various other races have ob¬ 
tained a footing. The total number of Ar¬ 
menians is estimated at 2,000,000, of whom 
probably one-half are in Armenia. The 
remainder, like the Jews, are scattered over 
various countries, and being strongly ad¬ 
dicted to commerce, plav an important part 
as merchants. They retain, however, in 
their different colonies their distinct na¬ 
tionality. 

Little is known of the early history of 
Armenia, but it was a separate state as 
early as the eighth century B.c., when it 
became subject to Assyria, as it also did 
subsequently to the Medes and the Per¬ 
sians. It was conquered by Alexander the 
Great in 325 b.c., but regained its indepen¬ 
dence about 190 B.c. Its king Tigranes, 
son-in-law of the celebrated Mithridates, 
was defeated by the Romans under Lucullus 
and Pompey about 69-66 B.c., but was left 
on the throne. Since then its fortunes have 
been various under the Romans, Parthians, 
Byzantine emperors, Persians, Saracens, 
Turks, &c. A considerable portion of it 
has been acquired by Russia in the present 
century, part of this in 1878. 

The Armenians received Christianity as 
early as the second century. During the 
Monophysitic disputes they held with those 
who rejected the twofold nature of Christ, 
and being dissatisfied with the decisions of 
the Council of Chalcedon (451) they sepa¬ 
rated from the Greek Church in 536. r l he 
popes have at different times attempted to 
gain them over to the Roman Catholic faith, 
but have not been able to unite them per¬ 
manently and generally with the Roman 
Church. There are, however, small num¬ 
bers here and there of United Armenians, 
who acknowledge the spiritual supremacy 
of the pope, agree in their doctrines with 
the Catholics, but retain their peculiar cere¬ 


- ARMIDA. 

monies and discipline. But the far greater 
part are yet Monophysites, and have re¬ 
mained faithful to their old religion and 
worship. Their doctrine differs from the 
orthodox chiefly in their admitting only one 
nature in Christ, and believing the Holy 
Spirit to proceed from the Father alone. 
Their sacraments are seven in number. 
They adore saints and their images, but do 
not believe in purgatory. Their hierarchy 
differs little from that of the Greeks. The 
Catholicus, or head of the church, has his 
seat at Etchmiadzin, a monastery near Eri- 
van, the capital of Russian Armenia, on 
Mount Ararat. 

The Armenian language belongs to the 
Indo-European famflv of languages, and is 
most closely connected with the Iranic grou p. 
The Old Armenian or Haikan language, 
which is still the literary and ecclesiastical 
language, is distinguished from the new 
Armenian, the ordinary spoken language, 
which contains a large intermixture of Per¬ 
sian and Turkish elements. r l he most flour¬ 
ishing period of Armenian literature ex¬ 
tended from the fourth to the fourteenth 
century. It then declined, but a revival 
began in the seventeenth century, and at 
the present day wherever any extensive 
community of Armenians have settled they 
have set up a printing-press. The Ar¬ 
menian Bible, translated from the Septua- 
gint by Isaac or Sahak, the patriarch, early 
in the fifth century, is a model of the classic 
style. 

Armentieres (ar-man-tyar), a town in 
France, dep. Nord, 10 miles w.N.W. of Lille, 
on the Lys. The town has extensive manu¬ 
factures of linen and cotton goods and an 
extensive trade. Pop. 26,614. 

Arm'felt, Gustav - Moritz, Count of, 
Swedish soldier; born 1757, died 1814. 
Though he had been highly favoured and 
loaded with honours by Gustavus III., he 
incurred the enmity of the Duke of Suder- 
mauia, guardian to the young king, Gus¬ 
tavus IV., and was deprived of all his titles 
and possessions. He was restored to his 
fortune and honours in 1799, when Gus¬ 
tavus IV. attained his majority, and held 
several high military posts. Ultimately, 
however, he entered the Russian service, 
was made count, chancellor of the Univer¬ 
sity of Abo, president of the department 
for the affairs of Finland, member of the 
Russian senate, and served in the campaign 
against Napoleon in 1812. 

Armida (ar-meda), a beautiful enchan- 
238 



ARMILLARY SPHERE-ARMOUR-PLATES. 


tress in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, who 
succeeds in bringing the hero Rinaldo, with 
whom she had fallen violently in love, to 
her enchanted gardens. Here he completely 
forgets the high task to which he had 
devoted himself, until messengers from the 
Christian host having arrived at the island, 
Rinaldo escapes with them by means of a 
powerful talisman. In the sequel Armida 
becomes a Christian. 

Ar'millary Sphere (L. armilla, a hoop), 
an astronomical instrument consisting of an 
arrangement of rings, all circles of one 
sphere, intended to represent the principal 
circles of the celestial globe, the rings stand¬ 
ing for the meridian of the station, the 
ecliptic, the tropics, the arctic and antarctic 
circles, &c., in their relative positions. Its 
main use is to give a representation of the 
apparent motions of the solar system. 

Armin'ians, a sect or party of Christians, 
so called from James Arminius or Harmen- 
sen, a Protestant divine of Leyden, who 
died in 1609. They were called also Re¬ 
monstrants, from their having presented a 
remonstrance to the States-general in 1610. 
The Arminian doctrines are: (1) Conditional 
election and reprobation, in opposition to 
absolute predestination. (2) Universal 
redemption, or that the atonement was 
made by Christ for all mankind, though 
none but believers can be partakers of the 
benefit. (3) That man, in order to exercise 
true faith, must be regenerated and renewed 
by the operation of the Holy Spirit, which 
is the gift of God; but that this grace is 
not irresistible and may be lost, so that men 
may relapse from a state of grace and die 
in their sins. These doctrines were vehe¬ 
mently attacked by the Calvinists of Hol¬ 
land, and were condemned by the Synod of 
Dort in 1619. The Arminians in conse¬ 
quence were treated with great severity; 
many of them fled to, and spread in, other 
countries, and though there is no longer 
any particular sect to which the name is 
exclusively applied, many bodies are classed 
as Arminians, as being opposed to the Cal¬ 
vinists on the question of predestination. 

Armin'ius, an ancient German hero cele¬ 
brated by his fellow-countrymen as their 
deliverer from the Roman yoke; born about 
18-16 b.c., assassinated a.d. 19. Having 
been sent as a hostage to Rome, he served 
in the Roman army, and was raised to the 
rank of eques. Returning home he found 
the Roman governor, Quintilius Varus, 
making efforts to Romanize the German 

239 


tribes near the Rhine. Placing himself at 
the head of the discontented tribes he com¬ 
pletely annihilated the army of Varus, con¬ 
sisting of three legions, in a three days’ 
battle fought in the Teutoburg forest. For 
some time he baffled the Roman general 
Germanicus, and after many years’ resis¬ 
tance to the vast power of the empire he 
drew upon himself the hatred of his country¬ 
men by aiming at the regal authority, and 
was assassinated. A national monument 
to his memory was inaugurated on the 
Grotenburg, near Detmold, in 1875. 

Arminius, Jacobus (properly Jakob 
Harmensen), founder of the sect of Armin¬ 
ians or Remonstrants, was born in South 
Holland in 1560, died 1609. He studied at 
Utrecht, in the University of Leyden, and 
at Geneva, where his chief preceptor in 
theology was Theodore Beza (1582). On 
his return to Holland he was appointed 
minister of one of the churches in Amster¬ 
dam, and chosen to undertake the refutation 
of a work which strongly controverted 
Beza’s doctrine of predestination; but he 
happened to be convinced by the work which 
he had undertaken to refute. Elected in 
1603 professor of divinity at Leyden, he 
openly declared his opinions, and was in¬ 
volved in harassing controversies, especially 
with his fellow professor Gomarus. These 
contests, with the continual attacks on his 
reputation, at length impaired his health 
and brought on a complicated disease, of 
which he died. See Arminians. 

Ar'mistice, a temporary suspension of 
hostilities between two belligerent powers 
or two armies by mutual agreement, often 
concluded for only a few hours to bury the 
slain, remove the wounded, and exchange 
prisoners, as also sometimes to allow of a 
parley between the opposing generals. A 
general armistice is usually the preliminary 
of a peace. 

Armor'ica (from two Celtic words signi¬ 
fying ‘upon the sea’), a name anciently 
applied to all north-western Gaul, latterly 
limited to what is now Brittany. Hence 
Armoric is one name for Breton or the 
language of the inhabitants of Brittany, a 
Celtic dialect closely allied to Welsh. 

Armour. See Arms. 

Ar'mourer, a maker of armour or arms, 
or one who keeps them in repair. In the 
British army an armourer is attached to 
each troop of cavalry, and to each company 
of infantry. 

Armour-plates, iron or steel plates with 



ARMS-ARMS AND ARMOUR. 


which the sides of vessels of war are covered 
with the view of rendering them shot-proof. 
See Iron-clad Vessels. 

Arms, Coat of, or Armorial Bearings, 
a collective name for the devices borne on 
shields, on banners, &c., as marks of dignity 
and distinction, and, in the case of family 
and feudal arms, descending from father to 
son. They were first employed by the Cru¬ 
saders, and became hereditary in families at 
the close of the twelfth century. They took 
their rise from the knights painting their 
banners or shields each with a figure or 
figures proper to himself, to enable him to 
be distinguished in battle when clad in ar¬ 
mour. See Heraldry. 

Arms, College of. See Herald. 

Arms, Stand of, the set of arms neces¬ 
sary for the equipment of a single soldier. 

Arms and Armour. The former term is 
applied to weapons of offence, the latter to 
the various articles of defensive covering 


a, Bascinet. 

и, Jewelled orle round the 

bascinet. 

c, Gorget,or gorgiere of plate. 

d, Pauldrons. 

e, Breastplate-cuirass. 

f, Rere-braces. 

g, Coudes or elbow-plates. 

h, Gauntlets. 

i, Vambrace. 

j, Skirt of taces. 

к, Military belt or cingulum. 

richly jewelled. 

l, Tuilles or tuillets. 

m, Cuisses. 

n, Genouilleres or knee- 

pieces. 

o, Jambes. 

p, Spur-straps. 

q, Sollerets. 

r, Misericorde or dagger. 

s, Sword, suspended by a 

transverse belt. 


Armour, from the effigy of Sir Richard Peyton, in 
Tong Church, Shropshire. 

used in war and military exercises, espe¬ 
cially before the introduction of gunpowder. 
Weapons of offence are divisible into two 
distinct sections—firearms, and arms used 
without gunpowder or other explosive sub¬ 
stance. The first arms of offence would 
probably be wooden clubs, then would follow 
wooden weapons made more deadly by means 



of stone or bone, stone axes, slings, bows 
and arrows with heads of flint or bone, 
and afterwards various weapons of bronze. 
Subsequently a variety of arms of iron and 
steel were introduced, which comprised the 
sword, javelin, pike, spear or lance, dagger, 
axe, mace, chariot scythe, &c.; with a rude 
artillery consisting of catapults, ballistae, 
and battering-rams. From the descriptions 
of Homer we know that almost all the 
Grecian armour, defensive and offensive, in 
his time was of bronze ; though iron was 
sometimes used. The lance, spear, and jave¬ 
lin were the principal weapons of this age 
among the Greeks. The bow is not often men¬ 
tioned. Among ancient nations the Egyp¬ 
tians seem to have been most accustomed 
to the use of the bow, which was the prin¬ 
cipal weapon of the Egyptian infantry. 
Peculiar to the Egyptians was a defensive 
weapon intended to catch and break the 
sword of the enemy. With the Assyrians 
the bow was a favourite weapon; but with 
them lances, spears, and javelins were in 
more common use than with the Egyptians. 
Most of the large engines of war, chariots 
with scythes projecting at each side from 
the axle, catapults, and ballistae, seem to 
have been of Assyrian origin. During the 
historical age of Greece the characteristic 
weapon was a heavy spear from 21 to 24 
feet in length. The sword used by the 
Greeks was short, and was worn on the 
right side. The Roman sword was from 22 
to 24 inches in length, straight, two-edged, 
and obtusely pointed, and as by the Greeks 
was worn on the right side. It was used 
principally as a stabbing weapon. It was 
originally of bronze. The most characteris¬ 
tic weapon of the Roman legionary soldier, 
however, was th epilum, which was a kind of 
pike or javelin, some 6 feet or more in length. 
The pilum was sometimes used at close- 
quarters, but more commonly it was thrown. 
The favourite weapons of the ancient Ger¬ 
manic races were the battle-axe, the lance or 
dart, and the sword. The weapons of the 
Anglo-Saxons were spears, axes, swords, 
knives, and maces or clubs. The Normans 
had similar weapons, and were well fur¬ 
nished with archers and cavalry. The 
cross-bow was a comparatively late inven¬ 
tion introduced by the Normans. Gun¬ 
powder was not used in Europe to discharge 
projectiles till the beginning of the four¬ 
teenth century. Cannon are first men¬ 
tioned in England in 1338, and there seems 
to be no doubt that they were used by the 

240 


















ARMS AND ARMOUR. 


English at the siege of Cambrai in 1339. 
The projectiles first used for cannon were of 
stone. Hand firearms date from the fifteenth 
century. At first they required two men 
to serve them, and it was necessary to rest 
the muzzle on a stand in aiming and firing. 


The first improvement was the invention of 
the match-lock, about 1476; this was followed 
by the wheel-lock, and about the middle of 
the seventeenth century by the flint-lock, 
which was inuniversal use until it was super¬ 
seded by the percussion-lock, the invention 



Homan Cuirass. 


Greek Armour. .Roman Cuirass—Scale armour. Chain Armour. 


of a Scotch clergyman early in the nine¬ 
teenth century. The needle-gun dates from 
1827. The only important weapon not a fire¬ 
arm that has been invented since the intro¬ 
duction of gunpowder is the bayonet, which 
is believed to have been invented about 1650. 
See Cannon, Musket, Rifle, &c. 

Some kind of defensive covering was prob¬ 
ably of almost as early invention as weapons 
of offence. The principal pieces of defensive 
armour used by the ancients were shields, 
helmets, cuirasses, and greaves. In the 
earliest ages of Greece the shield is described 
as of immense size, but in the time of the 
Peloponnesian war (about B.c. 420) it was 
much smaller. The Romans had two sorts 
of shields ; the scutum, a large oblong rect¬ 
angular highly convex shield, carried by 
the legionaries; and the parma, a small 
round or oval flat shield, carried by the 
light-armed troops and the cavalry. In the 
declining days of Rome the shields became 
larger and more varied in form. The helmet 
was a characteristic piece of armour among 
the Assyrians, Greeks, Etruscans, and 
Romans. Like all other body armour it 
was usually made of bronze. The helmet 
of the historical age of Greece was distin¬ 
guished by its lofty crest. The Roman 
helmet in the time of the early emperors 
fitted close to the head, and had a neck- 
guard and hinged cheek-pieces fastened 
under the chin, and a small bar across the 
face for a visor. Roth Greeks and Romans 
vol. i. 241 


wore cuirasses, at one time of bronze, but 
latterly of flexible materials. Greaves for 
the legs were worn by both, but among the 
Romans usually on one leg. The ancient 
Germans had large shields of plaited osier 
covered with leather, afterwards their shields 
were small, bound with iron, and studded 
with bosses. The Anglo-Saxons had round 



Horse-armour of Maximilian I. of Germany. 

a, Chamfron. b, Manefaire. c, Poitrinal, poitrel, or 
breastplate, d, Croupiere or buttock-piece. 

or oval shields of wood, covered with leather, 
and having a boss in the centre; and they 
had also corselets, or coats of mail, streng¬ 
thened with iron rings. The Normans were 
well protected by mail; their shields were 
somewhat triangular in shape, their helmets 
conical. In Europe generally metal armour 

















ARMSTRONG-ARMSTRONG GUN. 


was used from the tenth to the eighteenth 
century, and at first consisted of a tunic 
made of iron rings firmly sewn flat upon 
strong cloth or leather. The rings were 
afterwards interlinked one with another so 
as to form a garment 
of themselves, called 
chain - mail. Great 
variety is found in 
the pattern of the ar¬ 
mour, and in some 
cases small pieces of 
metal were used in¬ 
stead of rings, form¬ 
ing what is called 
scale-armour . A suit 
of armour consisting 
of larger pieces of 
metal, called plate- 
armour, was now in¬ 
troduced, and the 
whole body came to 
be incased in a heavy 
metal covering. The 
various forms of ring 
or scale armour were 
gradually superseded by the plate-armour, 
which continued to be worn until long 
after the introduction of firearms and field- 
artillery. A complete suit of armour was 
an elaborate and costly equipment, consist¬ 
ing of a number of different pieces, each 
with its distinctive name. In modern 
European armies the metal cuirass is still 
to some extent in use, the cuirassiers being 
heavy cavalry; and it is said that this 
piece of armour proves a useful defence 

all the time 



Allecret (Light Plate) 
Armour, a.d. 1540. 


against rifle bullets 


During 


that the use of heavy armour prevailed, 
the horsemen, who alone were fully armed, 
formed the principal strength of armies; 
and infantry were generally regarded as 
of hardly any account. England was, how¬ 
ever, an exception, as the English archers 
were almost at all times, before the invention 
of gunpowder, an important and sometimes 
the chief force in the army. The bow ( long¬ 
bow) of the English archers was from 5 to 6 
feet in length, and the arrow discharged from 
it was itself a yard long. The long-bow con¬ 
tinued in general use in England till the 
end of the reign of Elizabeth, and even as 
late as 1627 there was a body of English 
archers in the pay of Richelieu at the siege 
of La Rochelle. 

Armstrong, John, Scottish poet and phy¬ 
sician, born about 1709, died 1779. After 
studying medicine in Edinburgh he settled 


in London. In 1744 he published his chief 
work, the Art of Preserving Health, a didac¬ 
tic poem. This work raised his reputation 
to a height which his subsequent efforts 
scarcely sustained. In 1746 he became 
physician to an hospital for soldiers, and 
in 1760 he was appointed physician to the 
forces which went to Germany. After his 
return to London he published a collec¬ 
tion of his Miscellanies, which contained, 
however, nothing valuable. He afterwards 
visited France and Italy, and published an 
account of his tour under the name of 
Lancelot Temple. His last production was 
a volume of Medical Essays. 

Armstrong, William George, Lord, 
engineer and mechanical inventor, born at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 10th Nov. 1810. He 
was trained as a solicitor, and practised 
as such for some time, though his tastes 
scarcely lay in that direction. Among his 
early inventions were the hydro-electric 
machine, a powerful apparatus for produc¬ 
ing frictional electricity, and the hydraulic 
crane. In 1846 the Elswick works, near 
Newcastle, were established for the manu¬ 
facture of his cranes and other heavy iron 
machinery, and these works are now among 
the most extensive of their kind. Here the 
first rifled ordnance gun which bears his 
name was made in 1854. (See next art.) 
His improvements in the manufacture of 
guns and shells led to his being appointed 
engineer of rifled ordnance under govern¬ 
ment, and he was knighted in 1858. This 
appointment came to an end in 1863, since 
which time his ordnance has taken a pro¬ 
minent place in the armaments of different 
countries. He was raised to the peerage as 
Baron Armstrong in 1887. 

Armstrong Gun, a kind of cannon, so- 
called from its inventor (see the preceding 
article), made of wrought-iron, principally 
of spirally-coiled bars, so disposed as to 
bring the metal into the most favourable 
position for the strain to which it is to be 
exposed, and occasionally having an inner 
tube or core of steel, rifled with numerous 
shallow grooves. The size of these guns 
ranges from the smallest field-piece to 
pieces of the highest calibre. The projectile 
is coated with lead, and inserted into a cham¬ 
ber behind the bore. This the explosion 
drives forward, compressing its soft coating 
into the grooves, so as to give it a rotary 
motion, and at the same time obviate wind¬ 
age. Both breech-loading and muzzle-load¬ 
ing Armstrong guns are made. 

242 
















ARMY. 


Army, a collection or body of men armed 
for war, and organized in companies, bat¬ 
talions, regiments, brigades, or similar di¬ 
visions, under proper officers. Ancient 
armies from the time of Rhamses II. 
(Sesostris) of Egypt downwards, underwent 
a series of progressive improvements under 
the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Cartha¬ 
ginians, till they reached a high degree of per¬ 
fection under the Romans. In Rome every 
citizen from the age of seventeen to forty- 
six was bound to serve in the army. Under 
the republic a levy took place every year 
soon after'* the election of the Consuls. It 
was superintended by the military tribunes, 
who at once formed the new levies into 
legions. (See Legion.) Under the empire 
a standing army was required for mainten¬ 
ance of order in the interior and the defence 
of the frontiers. In the reign of Augustus 
the strength of this army reached 450,000 
men. The earliest military system of the 
Teutonic races consisted of the armed free¬ 
men, ruled by elected leaders, but even 
then there was a personal following or 
bodyguard of the' king or leader. Among 
the countries of modern Europe the foun¬ 
dation of a standing army was first laid in 
France. Charles VII. of France issued an 
ordinance for the creation of a number of 
troops of horse, and a corresponding body 
of infantry, the whole force amounting to 
25,000 men. The superiority of such a body 
over an assemblage of feudal troops was soon 
proved, and other states imitated the ex¬ 
ample of France. By the beginning of the 
sixteenth century France, Germany, and 
Spain were all in possession of considerable 
standing armies. Since the middle of the 
eighteenth century a great change has taken 
place in the composition of armies through 
the reintroduction of the principle of the 
universal liability of all men capable of 
bearing arms to military service, or, in other 
words, through the raising of armies by a 
general conscription, which is now done in 
every European country except Britain. 

Before the Norman conquest the armed 
force of England consisted essentially of a 
national militia (called fyrd), in which 
every landholder was bound to serve when 
called upon ; but the king and some of the 
great earls maintained bodies of troops out 
of their private means. Under William 
the Conqueror and his immediate successors 
the whole kingdom was divided into up¬ 
wards of 60,000 knights’ fees , every tenant 
of a fee being bound to attend his lord 

243 


with horse and arms (or provide a sub¬ 
stitute) at his own cost for forty days in 
each year. When one man held many fees 
he was bound to furnish the king with one 
fully equipped horseman for evex-y knight’s 
fee. In course of time it became customary 
for the king, when the holder of a fee was 
unable or unwilling to render the service 
required by his tenure, to accept instead 
a pecuniary fine ( scutage ); and these fines 
enabled the king either to maintain addi¬ 
tional troops or to pay the feudal troops to 
prolong their service. The feudal army 
thus created almost entirely superseded the 
national levies of the Anglo-Saxon period, 
yet these were not altogether given up, and 
have survived to the present day in two 
institutions, the posse comitatus and the 
militia. The armies with which the Eng¬ 
lish carried on their early wars with France 
were mostly made up of paid troops, the 
king usually contracting with some of his 
most wealthy subjects to levy the number 
required. At first foreign mercenaries were 
sometimes included in the troops so raised, 
but in later times the armies of England 
were always national. The chief strength of 
the feudal armies lay in the men-at-arms, 
who were all mounted, heavily armed, and 
protected by shields and defensive armour. 
On the other hand, the paid levies usually 
consisted of men educated from infancy in 
the use of the long-bow. The introduction 
of firearms closed the career of the man-at- 
arms, and caused the long-bow to be laid 
aside. 

From the accession of Charles I. till 
the reign of William III. the army was 
a constant cause of dispute between the 
king and the Parliament, the latter fearing 
that a standing army would be used, as it 
was elsewhere, as an instrument of tyranny. 
Under the Commonwealth the first standing 
army was maintained, but after the Res¬ 
toration it was reduced to the royal guai’ds, 
besides what was necessary for two or 
three garrisons. During the reign of 
Charles II. the forces of England were 
increased by the addition of a few other 
regiments, among which was the 1st or 
Royal Scots, originally the Scottish guard 
of the kings of France, transferred to Eng¬ 
land shortly after the Restoration. After 
Monmouth’s rebellion in the reign of James 
II. there was maintained in England a 
force of 20,000 men, but at the Revolution 
this army was to a great extent disbanded. 
The Bill of Rights declared the keeping of 


army-ARMY RESERVE. 


a standing army within the kingdom except 
with the consent of Parliament to be unlaw¬ 
ful ; but it was found necessary to grant 
that consent in order to subdue the ad¬ 
herents of James in Ireland, and in the 
first year of William’s reign the army was 
formally recognized on the basis on which 
it still exists, that its pay, and hence its 
strength, remain entirely under the control 
of the House of Commons. The entire 
administration of the British army, ac¬ 
cording to the arrangement that has been 
in force since 1870, belongs to the secretary 
of state for war. The details of the army 
administration are in the hands of the 
officer commanding-in-chief. The number 
of men to be maintained and the amount 
of the expenditure on account of the army 
are determined by an annual vote of the 
House of Commons based upon estimates 
laid before the house by the government. 
The British army is raised entirely by vol¬ 
untary enlistment, and in this respect 
differs from every continental force. 

According to the system of localization 
commenced in 1872, the United Kingdom 
is divided into ten military districts, six of 
which are in England, three in Ireland, 
while Scotland makes one by itself. Aider- 
shot, Woolwich, Chatham, and the Curragh 
are not included in any of these districts. 
In each district a general officer has com¬ 
mand of all the forces within it, including 
the militia and volunteers. These districts 
are subdivided into seventy sub-districts 
called infantry brigade districts, of which 
fifty-four are in England, eight in Scotland, 
and eight in Ireland. Each brigade con¬ 
sists of two battalions of the line, a brigade 
depot, two battalions of militia, besides the 
reserves of the district. The terms of en¬ 
listment are either for twelve years’ army 
service (long service), or for seven years’ 
army service and five years’ reserve service 
(short service). After twelve years’ service 
in the army a soldier may be permitted to 
re-engage for other nine years, and after 
the completion of the whole period of 
twenty-one years’ service is entitled to be 
discharged with a pension. British soldiers 
under the rank of a commissioned officer 
receive payment varying from Is. a day, 
which is the pay of a private in an infantry 
regiment, up to 6s. a day, the pay of a 
regimental serjeant-major in the Royal 
Engineers. The system of conferring com¬ 
missions by purchase was abolished by 
royal warrant of July 20, 1871. According 


to the regulations now in force, first com¬ 
missions are given to successful candidates 
at the Civil Service Commissioners’ open 
examinations; to university students or 
lieutenants of militia who pass certain ex¬ 
aminations ; or to non-commissioned officers 
specially recommended; while promotion is 
regulated by seniority principally, but 
partly by selection. The military strength 
of the British army in 1892-93 was: regular 
troops enrolled,home and colonial, 144,120; 
militia, 140,356; volunteers, 266,956; re¬ 
serve, 78,480; yeomanry, 14,095; total, 
641,010, besides 72,648 regular troops on 
Indian establishments. See Militia , Volun¬ 
teers, Yeomanry Cavalry , and the articles 
on the different countries. 

Army, American. See United States. 

Army Corps, one of the largest divisions 
of an army in the field, comprising all arms, 
and commanded by a general officer; sub¬ 
divided into divisions, which may or may 
not comprise all arms. 

Army Discipline and Regulation Act, 
an act of Parliament passed first in 1879 
to supersede the Annual Mutiny Act, in¬ 
vesting the crown with large powers to 
make regulations for the good government 
of the army, and to frame the Articles of 
War, which form the military code. 

Army Hospital Corps, a body of men 
belonging to the staff of the British army, 
and recruited from the army for the pur¬ 
pose of carrying on the work of the hospitals. 

Army List, a British official publication 
issued monthly, containing a list of the 
officers in the army, of changes gazetted, 
the stations of regiments, &c. 

Army Reserve, in the British army, a 
force consisting of a first and second class 
army reserve and a militia reserve. The 
first class army reserve consists: (1) of men 
who have completed their period of seven 
years in the active army, and of men who, 
after having served not less than three years 
in the active army, have been transferred 
to the reserve to complete the term of their 
engagement; and (2) of soldiers who have 
purchased their discharge and have en¬ 
rolled themselves in the reserve for five 
years. In time of war or when the country 
is threatened the men of this class become 
liable for the same services as the active 
army. The second class army reserve is 
made up of enrolled pensioners, and is liable 
only for service at home. The militia re¬ 
serve is composed of men belonging to the 
militia who voluntarily enrol themsslvea in 

244 


ARMY SCHOOLS 


ARNEE. 


this reserve for a period of six years, thus 
rendering themselves liable to be drafted 
into the regular army in case of war. 

Army Schools. See Military Schools. 

Army Service Corps, a branch of the 
ordnance store department of a national 
army, having charge of the supply^ store, 
pay, and transport service. 

Army Worm, the very destructive larva 
of the moth Ileliophlla or Leucania uni- 
puncta, so called from its habit of marching 
in compact bodies of enormous number, 
devouring almost every green thing it 
meets. It is about 1| inches long, greenish 
in colour, with black stripes, and is found 
in various parts of the world, but is par¬ 
ticularly destructive in North America. 
The larva of Sciara militaris , a European 
two-winged fly, is also called army worm. 

AmaVto, or Annotta. See Annatto. 

Arnaud (ar-no), Henri, pastor and mili¬ 
tary leader of the Yaudois of Piedmont; 
born 1641, died 1721. At the head of his 
people he successfully withstood the united 
forces of France and Savoy, and afterwards 
did good service against France in the War 
of the Spanish Succession. He had to re¬ 
tire from his country, and was followed by 
a number of his people, to whom he dis¬ 
charged the duties of pastor till his death. 

Amauld (ar-no), the name of a French 
family, several members < f which greatly dis¬ 
tinguished themselves. — Antoine, an emi¬ 
nent French advocate, was born 1560, died 
1619. Distinguished as a zealous defender of 
the cause of Henry IV., and for his power¬ 
ful and successful defence of the University 
of Paris against the Jesuits in 1594. His 
family formed the nucleus of the sect of the 
Jansenists (see Jansenius) in France. — 
His son Antoine, called the Great Amauld , 
was born February 6, 1612, at Paris; died 
August 9, 1694, at Brussels. He devoted 
himself to theology, and was received in 
1641 among the doctors of the Sorbonne. 
He engaged in all the quarrels of the French 
Jansenists with the Jesuits, the clergy, and 
the government, was the chief Jansenist 
writer, and was considered their head. Ex¬ 
cluded from the Sorbonne, he retired to 
Port Royal, where he wrote, in conjunction 
with his friend Nicole, a celebrated system 
of logic (hence called the Port Roval Logic). 
On account of persecution he fled, in 1679, 
to the Netherlands. His works, which are 
mainly controversies with the Jesuits or the 
Calvinists, are very voluminous.—His bro¬ 
ther Robert, born 1588, died 1674, was a 

245 


person of influence at the French court, but 
latterly retired to Port Royal, where he 
wrote a translation of Josephus and other 
works. Robert’s daughter Angelique, born 
1624, died 1684, was eminent in the reli¬ 
gious world, and was subjected to persecu¬ 
tion on account of her unflinching adherence 
to Jansenism. 

Ar'nauts. See Albania. 

Arndt (arnt), Ernst Moritz, German 
patriot and poet; was born 1769, died 180U. 
He was appointed piofessor of history at 
Greifswald in 1806, and stirred un tie 
national feeling against Napoleon in his 
work Geist der Zeit (Spirit of the Time) 
In 1812-13 he zealously promoted the war 
of independence by a number of pamphh ts, 
poems, and spirited songs, among wh ch it 
is sufficient to refer to his V as ist des 
Deutschen Yaterland?, Der Gott, der Eisen 
wachsen liess, and Was blasen die Trom- 
peten? Husaren herausl, which were caught 
up and sung from one end of Germany to 
the other. In 1817 he married a sister of 
the theologian Schleiermacher, and settled 
at Bonn in order to undertake the duties 
of professor of history. He was, however, 
suspended till 1840 on account of his liberal 
opinions, when he was restored to his chair 
on the accession of Frederick William IV. 

Arndt, Johann, celebrated German mys¬ 
tic theologian; born 1555, died 1621. His 
principal work, Wahres Christenthum (True 
Christianity), is still popular in Germany, 
and has been translated into almost all 
European languages. 

Arne (arn), Thomas Augustine, English 
composer; born at London 1710, died 1778. 
His first opera, Rosamond, was performed 
in 1733 at Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and was 
received with great app’ause. Then fol¬ 
lowed Fielding’s comic opera, Tom Thumb, 
or the Tragedy of Tragedies. His style in 
the Comus (1738) is still more original ar.d 
cultivated. To him we owe the national 
air Rule Britannia, originally given in a 
popular piece called the Masque of Alfred. 
After having composed two orat rios and 
several operas he received the title of Doc¬ 
tor of Music at Oxford. He composed, 
also, music for several of the son^s in 
Shakspere s dramas, and various pieces of 
instrumental music. 

Arnee', one of the numerous Indian vari¬ 
eties of the buffalo ( Bubdlus ami), remark¬ 
able as being the largest animal of the ox 
kind known. It measures about 7 feet high 
at the shoulders, and from 9 to 10| feet 



ARNHEM - 

long from the muzzle to the root of the 
tail. It is found chiefly in the forests at 
the base of the Himalayas. 

Arn'hem, or Arnheim, a town in Hol¬ 
land. prov. of Gelderland, 18 miles south¬ 
west of Zutphen, on the right bank of the 
Rhine. Pleasantly situated, it is a favour¬ 
ite residential resort, and it contains many 
interesting public buildings ; manufactures 
cabinet wares, mirrors, carriages, mathe¬ 
matical instruments, &c.; has paper-mills, 
and its trade is important. In 1795 it was 
stormed by the French, who were driven 
from it by the Prussians in 1813. Pop. 
46,233. 

Arnhem Land, a portion of the northern 
territory of S. Australia, lying west of the 
Gulf of Carpentaria, and forming a sort of 
peninsula. 

Ar'ni, a town of Madras, on the Cheyair 
River, 16 miles south of Arcot; formerly a 
large military station; stormed by Clive in 
1751, and scene of d fe it of Hyder Ali by 
Sir Eyre Coote in 1782. Pop 4500. 

Ar 'nica, a genus of plants, natural order 
Compositae, consisting of some twelve spe¬ 
cies, one of which is found in Central Eu¬ 
rope, A. montdna (leopard’s bane or moun¬ 
tain tobacco), and in the Western States. 
It has a perennial root, a stem about 2 feet 
hi h, bearing on the summit flowers of a 
dark golden yellow. In every part of the 
plant there is an acrid resin and a volatile 
oil, and in the flowers an acrid bitter prin¬ 
ciple called arnicin. The root contains also 
a considerable quantity of tannin. A tinc¬ 
ture of it is employed as an external appli¬ 
cation to wounds and bruises. 

Ar'nim, Elizabeth von, a German writer, 
also known as Bettina, wife of Louis Achim 
von Arnim, and sister of the poet Clemens 
Brentano; born at Frankfort in 1785, died 
at Lerlin 1859. Even in her childhood she 
manifested an inclination towards eccentri¬ 
cities and poetical peculiarities of many 
kinds. She entered on a correspondence 
with Goethe and contracted an affected and 
fantastic love towards him—then in his six¬ 
tieth year. In 1835 she published Goethe’s 
Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (Goethe’s 
Correspondence with a Child), containing, 
among others, the letters that she alleged 
to have passed between her and Goethe. 
Her later writings were of a politico-social 
character.—Her husband, Ludwig Achim 
von Arnim, born at Berlin in 1781, died 
1831; distinguished himself as a wri er of 
novels. In gongert "with her brother, Cle- 


- ARNOLD. 

mens Brentano, he published a collection of 
popular German songs and ballads entitled 
Des Knaben Wunderhorn.—Her daughter, 
Gisela von Arnim, is known in literature 
by her Dramatische Werke, 3 vols. 1857-63. 

Ax'no (anc. Arnus), a river of Italy 
which rises in the Etruscan Apennines, 
makes a sweep to the south and then trends 
westwards, divides Florence into two parts, 
washes Pisa, and falls, 4 miles below it, 
into the Tuscan Sea, .after a course of 130 
miles. 

Arno'bius, an early Christian writer, was 
a teacher of rhetoric at Sicca Veneria, in 
Numidia, and in 303 became a Christian; 
he died about 326. He wrote seven books 
of Disputationes adversus Gentes, in which 
he refuted the objections of the heathens 
against Christianity. This work betrays a 
defective knowledge of Christianity, but is 
rich in materials for the understanding of 
Greek and Roman mythology. 

Ar'nold, Benedict, a general in the Ameri¬ 
can army during the war of independence, 
who rendered his name infamous by his 
attempt to betray the strong fortress of 
West Point, with all the arms and immense 
stores which were there deposited, into the 
hands of the British. The project failed 
through the capture of Major Andrd, when 
Arnold made his escape to the British lines. 
He received a commission as major-general 
in the British army, and took part in several 
marauding expeditions. He subsequently 
settled in the West Indies, and ultimately 
came to London, where he died in 1801, 
aged 61. 

Ar'nold, Edwin, K.C.S.I., poet, Sanskrit 
scholar, and journalist, born 1832. Educated 
at Oxford, where he took the Ne wdegate prize 
for a poem entitled the Feast of Belshazzar 
in 1852, he was successively second master 
in King Edward VI.’s College at Birming¬ 
ham, and principal of the Sanskrit College 
at Poonah in Bombay. In 1861 he joined 
the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph , 
with which he has ever since been con¬ 
nected. He is author of Poems, narrative 
and lyrical, numerous translations from the 
Greek and Sanskrit; The Light of Asia, 
a poem presenting the life and teaching of 
Gautama, the founder of Buddhism; Pearls 
of the Faith; Lotus and Jewel; &c. 

Ar'nold, Matthew, English critic, essay¬ 
ist, and poet, was born at Laleham, near 
Staines, 1822, being a son of Dr. Arnold, 
of Rugby. He was educated at Winchester, 
Rugby, and Oxford, and became a Fellow 

246 



ARNOLD - 

of Oriel College. He was private secre¬ 
tary to Lord Lansdowne, 1847-51; ap¬ 
pointed inspector of schools, 1851; professor 
of poetry at Oxford, 1858; author of A 
Strayed Reveller and other poems, 1848; 
Empedocles on Etna, 1853; Merope, 1858; 
Essays in Criticism, 1865; on the Study of 
Celtic Literature, 1867; Schools and Uni¬ 
versities on the Continent, 1868; St. Paul 
and Protestantism, 1870; Literature and 
Dogma, 1873; volumes of essays, &c. He 
received the degree of LL.D. from both 
Oxford and Edinburgh, and lectured in 
Britain and in America. He died in 1888. 

Ar'nold, Thomas, head-master of Rugby 
School, and professor of modern history in 
the University of Oxford, born at Cowes, 
in the Isle of Wight, in 1795, died 1842. 
He entered Oxford in his sixteenth year, 
and in 1815 he was elected fellow of Oriel 
College, and both in that year and 1817 he 
obtained the chancellor's prize for Latin 
and English essays. After taking deacon’s 
orders he settled at Laleham, near Staines, 
where he employed himself in preparing 
young men for the universities. In 1828 
lie was appointed head-master of Rugby 
School, and devoted himself to his new 
duties with the greatest ardour. While 
giving due prominence to the classics, he 
deprived them of their exclusiveness by 
introducing various other branches into his 
course, and he was particularly careful that 
the education which he furnished should be 
in the highest sense moral and Christian. 
His success was remarkable. Not only did 
Rugby School become crowded beyond any 
former precedent, but the superiority of 
Dr. Arnold’s system became so generally 
recognized that it may be justly said to 
have done much for the general improve¬ 
ment of the public schools of England. In 
1841 he was appointed professor of modern 
history at Oxford, and delivered his intro¬ 
ductory course of lectures with great suc¬ 
cess. His chief works are his edition of 
Thucydides, his Roman History, unhappily 
left unfinished^ and his Sermons. There is 
an admirable memoir of him by A. P. Stan¬ 
ley, Dean of Westminster (London, two vols. 
1845). 

Ar'nold of Brescia, an Italian religious 
and political reformer and martyr of the 
twelfth century. He was one of the dis¬ 
ciples of Abelard, and attracted a consider¬ 
able following by preaching against the 
corruption of the clergy. Excommunicated 
by Innocent II., he withdrew to Zurich, 

247 


— AROMA. 

but soon reappearing in Rome he was taken 
and burned (1155). 

Ar'non, a river in Palestine, the boundary 
between the country of the Moabites and 
that of the Amorites, latterly of the Israel¬ 
ites, a tributary of the Dead Sea. 

Ar'not, Ar'nut, a name of the agreeably 
flavoured farinaceous tubers of the earth- 
nut or pig-nut (Bunium flexudsum, and B. 
Bulbocastdnum). See Earth-nut. 

Ar'nott, Dr. Neil, an eminent physician 
and physicist, was born at Arbroath, 1788, 
died 1874. Having graduated as M.A. at 
Aberdeen, he went to England, and was 
appointed a surgeon in the East India Com¬ 
pany's naval service. In 1811 he com¬ 
menced practice in London. In 1837 he 
was appointed extraordinary physician to 
the queen. In 1827 he published Elements 
of Physics, and in 1838 a treatise on Warm¬ 
ing and Ventilation, &c. He is widely 
known as the inventor of a stove, which is 
regarded as one of the most economical ar¬ 
rangements for burning fuel; a ventilating 
chimney-valve, and his water-bed for the 
protection of the sick against bed-sores. 
In 1869 he gave £1000 to each of the four 
Scotch universities and £2000 to the London 
University for the promotion of the study of 
physics. 

Amot'to. See A nnatto. 

Arnsberg (arnz'ber/i), a town in Prussia, 
prov. Westphalia, capital of the govern¬ 
ment of same name, on the Ruhr. Pop. 
6733.—The government of Arnsberg has 
an area of 2972 square miles, and a popu¬ 
lation of 1,189,688. 

Arnstadt (arn'stat), a town in Germany, 
principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, 
11 miles south by west of Erfurt, upon the 
Gera, which divides it into two parts. Has 
manufactures in leather, &c., and a good 
trade in grain and timber. Pop. 11,537. 

Arnswalde (arnz'val-de), a town of Prus¬ 
sia, prov. Brandenburg, 39 miles south-east 
of Stettin. Pop. 7358. 

Ar'nulf, great grandson of Charlemagne, 
elected King of Germany in a. n. 887; 
invaded Italy, captured Rome, and was 
crowned emperor by the pope (896); died 
a.d. 889. 

Aroi'dese, an order of monocotyledonous 
plants; same as Aracece. 

Ar'olsen, a German town, capital of the 
principality of Waldeck. Pop. 2476. 

Aro'ma, the distinctive fragrance ex¬ 
haled from spices, plants, &c., generally an 
agreeable odour, a sweet smell. 



AROMATICS 


ARRAS. 


Aromat'ics, drugs, or other substances 
which yield a fragrant smell, and often a 
warm pungent taste, as calamus [A corus 
Calamus ), ginger, cinnamon, cassia, laven¬ 
der, rosemary, laurel, nutmegs, cardamoms, 
pepper, pimento, cloves, vanilla, saffron. 
Some of them are used medicinally as tonics, 
stimulants, &c. 

Aromatic vinegar, a very volatile and 
powerful perfume made by adding the es¬ 
sential oils of lavender, cloves, &c., and often 
camphor, to crystallizable acetic acid. It 
is a powerful excitant in fainting, languor, 
and headache. 

Aro'na, an ancient Italian town near the 
s. extremity of Lago Maggiore. Pop. 4474. 
In the vicinity is the colossal statue of San 
Carlo Borromeo, 70 feet in height, exclusive 
of pedestal, 42 feet high. 

Aroos'took, a river of the north-eastern 
U. States and New Brunswick, a tributary 
of the St. John, length 120 miles. 

Arou'ra, Aru'ra, an ancient Greek mea¬ 
sure of surface, equal to 21,904 English 
square feet, or 9 poles 106’3 feet. 

Arpad (ar-pad'), the hero of Hungarian 
ballad and romance, founder of the kingdom 
of Hungary, born about 870, died 907. The 
Arpad dynasty reigned till 1301. 

Arpeggio (ar-pej'o), the distinct sound of 
the notes of an instrumental chord; the 
striking the notes of a chord in rapid suc¬ 
cession, as in the manner of touching the 
harp instead of playing them simultaneously. 

Arpent (ar-pan), formerly a French mea¬ 
sure for land, equal to five-sixths of an 
English acre; but it varied in different 
parts of France. 

Arpino (ar-pe'no; anc. Arpinum), a town 
of Southern Italy, province of Caserta, cele¬ 
brated as the birthplace of Caius Marius 
and Cicero. It manufactures woollens, 
linen, paper, &c. Pop. 11,535. 

Arqua (ar'kwa), a village of Northern 
Italy, about 13 miles south-west of Padua, 
where the poet Petrarch died, 18th July, 
1374. A monument has been erected over 
his grave. Pop. 1400. 

Ar'quebus, a hand-gun ; a species of fire¬ 
arm resembling a musket anciently used. 
It was fired from a forked rest, and some¬ 
times cocked by a wheel, and carried a ball 
that weighed nearly two ounces. A larger 
kind used in fortresses carried a heavier 
shot. 

Arraca'cha. See Aracacha. 

Arracan'. See Aracan. 

Ar'rack. See Arack, 


Ar'ragon. See A ragon. 

Ar'rah, a town of British India, in Shaha- 
bad district, Bengal, rendered famous during 
the mutiny of 1857 by the heroic resistance 
of a body of twenty civilians and fifty Sikhs, 
cooped up within a detached house, to a 
force of 3000 sepoys, who were ultimately 
routed and overthrown by the arrival of a 
small European reinforcement. Pop. 42,998. 

Arraignment (ar-ran'-), the act of calling 
or setting a prisoner at the bar of a court 
to plead guilty or not guilty to the matter 
charged in an indictment or information. 
The pleas are, the general issue, i. e., not 
guilty, or in abatement or in bar; the pris¬ 
oner may demur to the indictment, or he 
may confess the fact. 

Ar'ran, an island of Scotland, in the Firth 
of Clyde, part of Bute county; length, north 
to south, 20 miles; breadth, about 10 miles; 
area, 165 square miles, or 105,814 acres, of 
which about 15,000 are under cultivation. 
It is of a wild and romantic appearance, 
particularly the northern half, where the 
island attains its loftiest summit in Goatfell, 
2866 feet high. The coast presents several 
indentations, of which thatof Lamlash, form¬ 
ing a capacious bay, completely sheltered 
by Holy Island, is one of the best natural 
harbours in the west of Scotland. On the 
small island of Pladda, about a mile from 
the south shore, a lighthouse has been 
erected. The geology of Arran has at¬ 
tracted much attention, as furnishing within 
a comparatively narrow space distinct sec¬ 
tions of the great geological formations; 
while the botany possesses almost equal 
interest, both in the variety and the rarity 
of many of its plants. Among objects of 
interest are relics of Danish forts, standing 
stones, cairns, &c. Lamlash and Brodick 
are villages. The island nearly all belongs 
to the Duke of Hamilton. Pop. 4730, of 
whom many speak Gaelic. 

Arran, Earls of. See Hamilton, Fa¬ 
mily of. 

Arrangement, in music, the adaptation 
of a composition to voices or instruments 
for which it was not originally written; also, 
a piece so adapted. 

Ar'ran Islands. See Aran. 

Arraro'ba. See Araroba. 

Arras (a-ra), a town of France, capital of 
the department Pas-de-Calais, well built, 
with several handsome squares and a citadel; 
cathedral, public library, botanic garden, 
museum; and numerous flourishing indus¬ 
tries. In the middle ages it was famous 

248 


ARREST 


ARROW-ROOT. 


for the manufacture of tapestry, to which 
the English applied the name of the town 
itself. Pop. 27,041. 

Arrest' is the apprehending or restrain¬ 
ing of one’s person, which, in civil cases, can 
take place legally only by process in execu¬ 
tion of the command of some court or offi¬ 
cers of justice; but in criminal cases any 
man may arrest without warrant or precept, 
and every person is liable to arrest without 
distinction, but no man is to be arrested 
unless charged with such a crime as will at 
)<-nst justify holding him to bail when taken. 
Although ordinarily applied to any legal 
seizure of a person, arrest is the term more 
properly used in civil cases, and appre¬ 
hension in criminal cases. 

Arrest'ment, in Scots law, a process by 
which a creditor may attach money or mov¬ 
able property which a third party holds for 
behoof of his debtor. In 1870 an act was 
passed for Scotland which provides that only 
that part of the weekly wages of labourers, 
and of workpeople generally, which is in 
excess of 2l)s. is liable to arrestment for 
debt. 

Arrest of Judgment, in law, the stay¬ 
ing or stopping of a judgment after verdict, 
for causes assigned. Courts have power 
to arrest judgment for intrinsic causes 
appearing upon the face of the record; as 
when the declaration varies from the origi¬ 
nal writ; when the verdict differs materi¬ 
ally from the pleadings; or when the case 
laid in the declaration is not sufficient in 
point of law to found an action upon. 

Arre'tium. See Arezzo. 

Arrhenath'erum, a genus of oat-like 
grasses, of which A. elatius, sometimes 
called French rye-grass, is a valuable fodder 
plant. 

Ar'ria, the heroic wife of a Roman named 
Caecina Paetus. Paetus was condemned to 
death in 42 A.D., for his share in a conspi¬ 
racy against the emperor Claudius, and was 
encouraged to suicide by his wife, who 
stabbed herself and then handed the dagger 
to her husband with the words, ‘It does not 
hurt, Paetus! ’ 

Ar'rian, or Flavius Arrianus, a Greek 
historian, native of Nicomedia, flourished 
in the second century, under the emperors 
Hadrian and the A ntonines. He was first a 
priest of Ceres; but at Rome he became a 
disciple of Epictetus, was honoured with the 
citizenship of Rome, and was advanced to 
the senatorial and even consular dignities. 
His extant works are: The Expedition of 

249 


Alexander, in seven books; a book on the 
affairs of India; an Epistle to Hadrian; a 
Treatise on Tactics; a Periplus of the Sea 
of Azof and the Red Sea; and his Enchiri¬ 
dion, an excellent moral treatise, containing 
the discourses of Epictetus. 

Ar'ris, in architecture, the line in which 
the two straight or curved surfaces of a 
body, forming an exterior angle, meet each 
other. 

Arro'ba (Spanish), a weight formerly used 
in Spain, and still used in the greater part 
of Central and South America. In the 
states of Spanish origin its weight is gene¬ 
rally equal to 25‘35 lbs. avoirdupois; in 
Brazil it equals 32’38 lbs.—Also a measure 
for wine, spirits, and oil, ranging from 2f 
gallons to about 10 gallons. 

Arroe, Danish Island. See Aeroe. 

Arrondissement ( a - ron - des - man ), in 
France an administrative district, the sub¬ 
division of a department, or of the quarters 
of some of the larger cities. 

Arrow, a missile weapon, straight, slender, 
pointed and barbed, to be shot with a bow. 
See Archery , Bow. 

Arrowhead ( Sagittaria ), a genus of aqua¬ 
tic plants found in all parts of the world 
within the torrid and temperate zones, nat. 
ord. Alismaceae, distinguished by possessing 
barren and fertile flowers, with a three¬ 
leaved calyx and three coloured petals. 
The common arrowhead ( S. sagittifolia ) 
has a tuberous root, nearly globular, and 
is known by its arrow-shaped leaves with 
lanceolate straight lobes. 

Arrowheaded Characters. See Cunei¬ 
form Writing. 

Arrow Lake, an expansion of the Colum¬ 
bia River, in British Columbia, Canada; about 
95 m. long from N. to s. ; often regarded as 
forming two lakes—Upper and Lower Ar¬ 
row Lake. 

Arrow-root, a starch largely used for 
food and for other purposes. Arrow-root 
proper is obtained from the rhizomes or 
rootstocks of several species of plants of the 
genus Maranta (nat. order Marantacese), 
and perhaps owes its name to the scales 
w T hich cover the rhizome, which have some 
resemblance to the point of an arrow. Some, 
however, suppose that the name is due to 
the fact of the fresh roots being used as an 
application against wounds inflicted by poi¬ 
soned arrows, and others say that arrow is 
a corruption of ara, the Indian name of the 
plant. The species from which arrow-root 
is most commonly obtained is M. arundi• 



ARROWSMITH 


- ARSENIC. 


nacea, hence called the arrow-root plant. 
Brazilian arrow-root, or tapioca meal, is got 
from the large fleshy root of Manihot utilis - 
sima, after the 
poisonous juice 
has been got rid 
of; East Indian 
arrow-root, from 
the large root¬ 
stocks of Cur- 
ctima angusti- 
folia; Chinese 
arrow-root, from 
the creeping rhi¬ 
zomes of Nelum- 
bium speciosum; 

English arrow- 
root, from the 
potato; Portland 
arrow-root, from 
-the corms of 
Arum, maculatum; and Oswego arrow-root, 
from Indian corn. 

Arrowsmith, Aaron, a distinguished 
English chartographer, born 1750, died 
1823; he raised the execution of maps to 
a perfection it had never before attained. 
His nephew, John, born 1790, died 1873, 
was no less distinguished in the same field; 
his London Atlas of Universal Geography 
may be specially mentioned. 

Arroyo (ar-ro'yo), the name of two towns 
of Spain, in Estremadura, the one, called 
Arroyo del Puerco (population 5727), about 
10 miles west of Oaceres; the other, called 
Arroyo Molinos de Montanches, about 27 
miles south-east of Caceres, memorable from 
the victory gained by Lord Hill over a 
French force under General Gerard, 28th 
October, 1811. 

Ar'ru (or Aroo) Islands, a group belong¬ 
ing to the Dutch, south of western New Gui¬ 
nea, and extending from north to south 
about 127 miles. They are composed of 
coralline limestone, nowhere exceeding 200 
feet above the sea, and are well wooded 
and tolerably fertile. The natives belong 
to the Papuan race, with an intermixture 
of foreign blood, and are partly Christians. 
The chief exports are trepang, tortoise-shell, 
pearls, mother-of-pearl, and edible birds’- 
nests. Pop. of group about 20,000. 

Ar'saces, the founder of a dynasty of 
Parthian kings (256 B.C.), who, taking their 
name from him, are called Arsacidee. There 
were thirty-one in all. See Parthia. 

Ar'samas, a manufacturing town in the 
Russian government of Nijni-Novgorod, on 


the Tesha, 250 miles east of Moscow, with 
a cathedral and large convent. Pop. 11,695. 

Ar'senal, a royal or public magazine or 
place appointed for the making, repairing, 
keeping, and issuing of military stores. An 
arsenal of the first class should include 
factories for guns and gun-carriages, small- 
arms, small-arms ammunition, harness, 
saddlery, tents, and powder; a laboratory 
and large store-houses. In arsenals of the 
second class workshops take the place of 
the factories. The Royal Arsenal, Wool¬ 
wich, which manufactures warlike imple¬ 
ments and stores for the army and navy, 
was formed about 1720, and comprises fac¬ 
tories, laboratories, &c., for the manufac¬ 
ture and final fitting up of almost every 
kind of arms and ammunition. Great quan¬ 
tities of military and naval stores are kept 
at the dockyards of Chatham, Portsmouth, 
Plymouth, and Pembroke. In France 
there are various arsenals or depots of war 
material, which latter is manufactured at 
M6zihres, Toulouse, Besangon, &c.; the great 
naval arsenals are Brest and Toulon. The 
chief German arsenals are at Spandau, 
Strassburg, and Dantzig, that at the first- 
mentioned place being the great centre 
of the military manufactories. The chief 
Austrian arsenal is the immense establish¬ 
ment at Vienna, which includes gun-fac¬ 
tory, laboratory, small-arms and carriage 
factories, &c. Russia has her principal 
arsenal at St. Petersburg, with supple¬ 
mentary factories of arms and ammunition 
at Briansk, Kiev, and elsewhere. In Italy 
Turin is the centre of the military factories. 
There are a number of arsenals in the 
United States, but individually they are of 
little importance. 

Ar'senic (symbol As, atomic weight 75), a 
metallic element of very common occurrence, 
being found in combination with many of 
the metals in a variety of minerals. It is of 
a dark-gray colour, and readily tarnishes 
on exposure to the air, first changing to 
yellow, and finally to black. In hardness 
it equals copper; it is extremely brittle, and 
very volatile, beginning to sublime before 
it melts. It burns with a blue flame, and 
emits a smell of garlic. Its specific gravity is 
5*7 6. It forms alloys with most of the metals. 
Combined with sulphur it forms orpiment 
and realgar, which are the yellow and red 
sulphides of arsenic. Orpiment is the true 
arsenicum of the ancients. With oxygen 
arsenic forms two compounds, the more im¬ 
portant of which is arsenious oxide or ar- 

250 



Arrow-root Plant (Maranta 
arundinCU6u).—a a, Rhizomes. 



ARSHIN-ARTEDI. 


senic trioxide (As/) 3 ), which is the white 
arsenic, or simply arsenic of the shops. It 
is usually seen in white, glassy, translucent 
masses, and is obtained by sublimation from 
several ores containing arsenic in combina¬ 
tion with metals, particularly from arseni¬ 
cal pyrites. Of all substances arsenic is 
that which has most frequently occasioned 
death by poisoning, both by accident and 
design. The best remedies against the 
effects of arsenic on the stomach are hy¬ 
drated sesquioxide of iron or gelatinous 
hydrate of magnesia, or a mixture of both, 
with copious draughts of bland liquids of a 
mucilaginous consistence, which serve to 
procure its complete ejection from the sto¬ 
mach. Oils and fats generally, milk, albu¬ 
men, wheat-flour, oatmeal, sugar or syrup, 
have all proved useful in counteracting its 
effect. Like many other virulent poisons 
it is a safe and useful medicine, especially 
in skin diseases, when judiciously employed. 
It is used as a flux for glass, and also for 
forming pigments. The arsenite of copper 
(Scheele’s green) and a double arsenite and 
acetate of copper (emerald green) are largely 
used by painters; they are also used to co¬ 
lour paper-hangings for rooms, a practice 
not unaccompanied with considerable dan¬ 
ger, especially if flock papers are used or if 
the room is a confined one. Arsenic has 
been too frequently used to give that bright 
green often seen in coloured confectionery, 
and to produce a green dye for articles of 
dress and artificial flowers. 

Arshin (ar-shen'), a Russian measure of 
length equal to 28 inches. 

Arsin'oe, a city of ancient Egypt on Lake 
Moeris, said to have been founded about 
B.C. 2300, but renamed after Arsinoe, wife 
and sister of Ptolemy II. of Egypt, and 
called also Crocodilopolis, from the sacred 
crocodiles kept at it. 

Ar'sis, a term applied in prosody to that 
syllable in a measure where the emphasis 
is put; in elocution, the elevation of the 
voice, in distinction from thesis, or its de¬ 
pression. Arsis and thesis, in music, are the 
strong position and weak position of the bar, 
indicated by the down-beat and up-beat in 
marking time. 

Ar'son, in common law, the malicious 
burning of a dwelling-house or outhouse of 
another man, which by the common law is 
felony, and which, if homicide result, is 
murder. Also, the wilful setting fire to 
any church, chapel, warehouse, mill, barn, 
agricultural produce, ship, coal-mine, and 


the like. In Scotland it is called wilful 
fire-raising. In the United States and 
Great Britain it is a considerable aggrava¬ 
tion if the burning is to defraud insurers. 

Art, in its most extended sense, as dis¬ 
tinguished from nature on the one hand 
and from science on the other, has been de¬ 
fined as every regulated operation or dex¬ 
terity by which organised beings pursue 
ends which they know beforehand, together 
with the rules and the result of every such 
operation or dexterity. In this wide sense 
it embraces what are usually called the use¬ 
ful arts. In a narrower and purely aesthetic 
sense it designates what is more specifically 
termed the fine arts, as architecture, sculp¬ 
ture, painting, music, and poetry. The 
useful arts have their origin in positive 
practical needs, and restrict themselves to 
satisfying them. The fine arts minister to 
the sentiment of taste through the medium 
of the beautiful in form, colour, rhythm, or 
harmony. See Painting, Sculpture, &c.— 
In the middle ages it was common to give 
certain branches of study the name of arts. 
(See Arts.) 

Arta, a gulf, town, and river of north¬ 
western Greece. The town (ancient Am- 
hracia) was transferred by Turkey to Greece 
in 1881 (pop. 4990). It stands on the river 
Arta, which for a considerable distance 
above its mouth forms a part of the new 
boundary between Greece and Turkey. 

Artaxerx'es (Old Pers. Artakhsathra, 
‘the mighty’), the name of several Persian 
kings: — 1 . Artaxerxes, surnamed Longi- 
mXnus, succeeded his father Xerxes I. 
B.c. 465. He subjected the rebellious 
Egyptians, terminated the war with Athens, 
governed his subjects in peace, and died B.c. 
425.—2. Artaxerxes, surnamed Mnemon, 
succeeded his father Darius II. in the year 
405 B.c. After having vanquished his 
brother Cyrus he made war on the Spar¬ 
tans, who had assisted his enemy, and forced 
them to abandon the Greek cities and islands 
of Asia to the Persians. On his death, b.c. 
359, his son Ochus ascended the throne 
under the name of—3. Artaxerxes Ochus 
(359 to 339 b.c.). After having subjected 
the Phoenicians and Egyptians, and dis¬ 
played great cruelty in both countries, he 
was poisoned by his general Bagoas. 

Arte'di, Peter, a Swedish naturalist, 
born 1705, drowned at Amsterdam 1735. 
He studied at Upsala, turned his attention 
to medicine and natural history, a’id was a 
friend of Linnaeus. His Bibliotheca Ich- 



ARTEMIS 


ARTESIAN WELLS. 


thyologica and Philosophia Ichthyologica, 
together with a life of the author, were 
published at Leyden in 1738. 

Ar'temis, an ancient Greek divinity, iden¬ 
tified with the Roman Diana. She was the 
daughter of Zeus (Jupiter) and Leto or 
Latona, and was the twin sister of Apollo, 
born in the island of Delos. She is variously 
represented as a huntress, with bow and 
arrows; as a goddess of the nymphs, in a 
chariot drawn by four stags; and as the 
moon goddess, with the crescent of the moon 
above her forehead. She was a maiden 
divinity, never conquered by love, except 
when Endymion made her feel its power. 
She demanded the strictest chastity from 
her worshippers, and she is represented as 


having changed Actseon into a stag, and 
caused him to be torn in pieces by his own 
dogs, because he had secretly watched her 
as she was bathing. The Artemisia was a 
festival celebrated in her honour at Delphi. 
The famous temple of Artemis at Ephesus 
was considered one of the wonders of the 
world, but the goddess worshipped there 
was very different from the huntress god¬ 
dess of Greece, being of Eastern origin, and 
regarded as the symbol of fruitful nature. 

Artemi'sia, Queen of Caria, in Asia Minor, 
about 352-350 b.c., sister and wife of Mau- 
solus, to whom she erected in her capital, 
Halicarnassus, a monument, called the Mau¬ 
soleum, which was reckoned among the 
seven wonders of the world. 



Artemi'sia, a genus of plants of numerous 
species, nat. order Compositse, comprising 
mugwort, southern-wood, and wormwood. 
Certain alpine species are the flavouring 
ingredient in absinthe. See Wormwood. 

Artemi'sium, a promontory in Euboea, an 
island of the JEgean, near which several 
naval battles between the Greeks and 
Persians were fought, B.c. 480. 

Ar'temus Ward. See Browne, Charles 
Farrar. 

Ar'teries, the system of cylindrical ves¬ 
sels or tubes, membranous, elastic, and pul¬ 
satile, which convey the blood from the 
heart to all parts of the body, by ramifica¬ 
tions which as they proceed diminish in size 
and increase in number, and terminate in 
minute capillaries uniting the ends of the 
arteries with the beginnings of the veins. 
There are two principal arteries or arterial 
trunks: the aorta, which rises from the left 
ventricle of the heart and ramifies through 
the whole body, sending off great branches 
to the head, neck, and upper limbs, and 
downwards to the lower limbs, &c.; and the 
'pulmonary artery, which conveys venous 
blood from the right ventricle to the lungs, 
to be purified in the process of respiration. 

Arteriot'omy, the opening or cutting of 
an artery for the purpose of blood-letting, 
as, for instance, to relieve pressure of the 
brain in apoplexy. 

Arte'sian Wells, so called from the French 


province of Artois, where they appear to 
have been first used on an extensive scale, 
are perpendicular borings into the ground 
through which water rises to the surface of 
the soil, producing a constant flow or stream, 
the ultimate sources of supply being higher 
than the mouth of the boring, and the water 
thus rising by the well-known law. They 
are generally sunk in valley plains and dis¬ 
tricts where the lower pervious strata are 
bent into basin-shaped curves. The rain 
falling on the outcrops of these saturates 
the whole porous bed, so that when the bore 
reaches it the water by hydraulic pressure 
rushes up towards the level of the highest 
portion of the strata. The supply is some¬ 
times so abundant as to be used extensively 
as a moving power, and in arid regions for 
fertilizing the ground, to which purpose 
artesian springs have been applied from a 
very remote period. Thus many artesian 
wells have been sunk in the Algerian Sahara 
which have proved an immense boon to the 
district. The Avater of most of these is 
potable, but a few are a little saline, though 
not to such an extent as to influence vege¬ 
tation. The hollows in which London and 
Paris lie are both perforated in many places 
by borings of this nature. At London they 
were first sunk only to the sand B B, but 
latterly into the chalk C C. One of the most 
celebrated artesian wells is that of Grenelle 
near Paris, 1798 feet deep, completed in 

252 








AftTEVELD 

1841, after eight years’ work. One of the 
deepest is at Rochefort in France, 2765 feet. 
Wells of great depth are also found in 
America. As the temperature of water 
from great depths is invariably higher than 
that at the surface, artesian wells have been 
made to supply warm water for heating 
manufactories, greenhouses, hospitals, fish¬ 
ponds, &c. The petroleum wells of America 
are of the same technical description. These 
wells are now made with larger diameters 
than formerly, and altogether their con¬ 
struction has been rendered much more easy 
in modern times. See Boring. 

Arteveld, Artevelde (ar'te-velt, ar'te- 
vel-de), the name of two men distinguished 
in the history of the Low Countries. 1. 
Jacob van, a brewer of Ghent, born about 
1300; was selected by his fellow-townsmen 
to lead them in their struggles against 
Count Louis of Flanders. In 1338 he was 
appointed captain of the forces of Ghent, 
and for several years exercised a sort of 
sovereign power. A proposal to make the 
Black Prince, son of Edward III. of Eng¬ 
land, governor of Flanders led to an insur¬ 
rection, in which Arteveld lost his life 
(1345).—2. Philip, son of the former, at 
the head of the forces of Ghent gained a 
great victory over the Count of Flanders, 
Louis II., and for a time assumed the state 
of a sovereign prince. His reign proved 
short-lived. The Count of Flanders returned 
with a large French force, fully disciplined 
and skilfully commanded. Arteveld was 
rash enough to meet them in the open field 
at Roosebeke, between Courtray and Ghent, 
in 1382, and fell with 25,000 Flemings. 

Arthri'tis (Greek arthron, a joint), any 
inflammatory distemper that affects the 
joints, particularly chronic rheumatism or 
gout. 

Arthro'dia, a species of articulation, in 
which the head of one bone is received into 
a shallow socket in another; a ball-and- 
socket joint. 

Arthrop'oda, one of the two primary di¬ 
visions (Anarthropoda being the other) into 
which modern naturalists have divided the 
sub-kingdom Annulosa, having the body 
composed of a series of segments, some al¬ 
ways being provided with articulated appen¬ 
dages. The division comprises Crustaceans, 
Spiders, Scorpions, Centipedes, and Insects. 

Arthrozoa, a name sometimes given to all 
articulated animals, including the arthro- 
poda and worms. 

Arthur, Chester Alan, twenty-first 
253 


— ARTIAD. 

president of the United States, born 1830» 
died 1886; was the son of Scottish parents, 
his father being pastor of Baptist churches 
in Vermont and New York. He chose law 
as a profession, and practised in New York. 
As a politician he became a leader in the 
Republican party. During the civil war he 
was energetic as quarter-master general of 
New York in getting troops raised and 
equipped. He was afterwards collector of 
customs for the port of New York. In 1880 
he was elected vice-president, succeeding as 
president on the death of Garfield in 1881, 
and in this position he gave general satis¬ 
faction. 

Ar'thur, King, an ancient British hero 
of the sixth century, son of Uther Pen- 
dragon and the Princess Igerna, wife of 
Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. He married 
Guinevere or Ginevra; established the 
famous order of the Round Table; and 
reigned, surrounded by a splendid court, 
twelve years in peace. After this, as the 
poets relate, he conquered Denmark, Nor¬ 
way, and France, slew the giants of Spain, 
and went to Rome. From thence he is said 
to have hastened home on account of the 
faithlessness of his wife, and Modred, his 
nephew, who had stirred up his subjects to 
rebellion. He subdued the rebels, but died 
in consequence of his wounds, on the island 
of Avalon. The story of Arthur is supposed 
to have some foundation in fact, and has 
ever been a favourite subject with our ro¬ 
manticists and our poets. It is generally 
believed that Arthur was one of the last 
great Celtic chiefs who led his countrymen 
from the west of England to resist the set¬ 
tlement of the Saxons in the country. But 
many authorities regard him as a leader of 
the Cymry of Cumbria and Strath-Clyde 
against the Saxon invaders of the east coast 
and the Piets and Scots north of the Forth 
and the Clyde. 

Arthur’s Seat, a picturesque hill within 
the Queen’s Park in the immediate vicinity 
of Edinburgh; has an altitude of 822 feet; 
descends rollingly to the N. and E. over a 
base each way of about five furlongs; pre¬ 
sents an abrupt shoulder to the s., and 
breaks down precipitously to the w. It is 
composed of a diversity of eruptive rocks, 
with some interposed and uptilted sedimen¬ 
tary ones; and derives its name somehow 
from the legendary King Arthur. 

Ar'tiad (Gr. artios, even-numbered), in 
chemistry, a name given to an element of 
even equivalency, as a dyad, tetrad, &c.; 



ARTICHOKE-ARTICLES OF WAR. 


opposed to a perissad, an element of uneven 
equivalency, such as a monad, triad, &c. 

Artichoke (Cynara Scolymus), a well- 
known plant of the nat. order Compositae, 
somewhat resembling a thistle, with large 
divided prickly leaves. The erect flower- 
stem terminates in a large round head of 
numerous imbricated oval spiny scales which 
surround the flowers. The fleshy bases of 
the scales with the large receptacle are the 
parts that are eaten. Artichokes were in¬ 
troduced into England early in the sixteenth 
century. The Jerusalem artichoke (a cor¬ 
ruption of the Ital. girasole, a sunflower), or 
Helianthus tuberdsus, is a species of sun¬ 
flower, whose roots are used like potatoes. 

Article, in grammar, a part.of speech 
used before nouns to limit or define their ap¬ 
plication. In English a or an is usually 
called the indefinite article (the latter form 
being used before a vowel sound), and the, 
the definite article, but they are also de¬ 
scribed as adjectives. An was originally 
the same as one, and the as that. In Latin 
there were no articles, and Greek has only 
the definite article. 

Articles, Lords of the, in Scottish his¬ 
tory, a committee chosen equally from each 
estate or division of parliament to prepare 
the various measures, which when completed 
were laid before the parliament for adoption 
or rejection. They were first appointed in 
1369, and gradually became a recognized 
part of the Scottish legislative machinery. 
Abolished 1690. 

Articles, The Six, in English ecclesiasti¬ 
cal history, articles imposed by a statute 
(often called the Bloody Statute) passed in 
1541, the thirty-third year of the reign of 
Henry VIII. They decreed the acknowledg¬ 
ment of transubstantiation, the sufficiency 
of communion in one kind, the obligation 
of vows of chastity, the propriety of private 
masses, celibacy of the clergy, and auricular 
confession. Acceptance of these doctrines 
was made obligatory on all persons under 
the severest penalties; the act, however, 
was relaxed in 1544, and repealed in 1549. 

Articles, The Thirty-nine, of the 
Church of England, a statement of the par¬ 
ticular points of doctrine, thirty-nine in 
number, maintained by the English Church; 
first promulgated by a convocation held in 
London in 1562-63, and confirmed by royal 
authority; founded on and superseding an 
older code issued in the reign of Edward VI. 
The five first articles contain a profession 
of faith in the Trinity; the incarnation of 


Jesus Christ, his descent to hell, and his 
resurrection; the divinity of the Holy Ghost. 
The three following relate to the canon of 
the Scripture. The eighth article declares 
a belief in the Apostles’, Nicene, and Atha- 
nasian creeds. The ninth and following 
articles contain the doctrine of original sin, 
of justification by faith alone, of predestina¬ 
tion, &c. The nineteenth, twentieth, and 
twenty-first declare the church to be the 
assembly of the faithful; that it can decide 
nothing except by the Scriptures. The 
twenty-second rejects the doctrine of purga¬ 
tory, indulgences, the adoration of images, 
and the invocation of saints. The twenty- 
third decides that only those lawfully called 
shall preach or administer the sacraments. 
The twenty-fourth requires the liturgy to 
be in English. The twenty-fifth and twenty- 
sixth declare the sacraments effectual signs 
of grace (though administered by evil men), 
by which God excites and confirms our faith. 
They are two: baptism and the Lord's 
supper. Baptism, according to the twenty- 
seventh article, is a sign of regeneration, 
the seal of our adoption, by which faith is 
confirmed and grace increased. In the 
Lord’s supper, according to article twenty- 
eighth, the bread is the communion of the 
body of Christ, the wine the communion of 
his blood, but only through faith (article 
twenty-ninth); and the communion must 
be administered in both kinds (article thirty). 
The twenty-eighth article condemns the 
doctrine of transubstantiation, and the ele¬ 
vation and adoration of the host; the thirty- 
first rejects the sacrifice of the mass as 
blasphemous; the thirty-second permits the 
marriage of the clergy; the thirty-third 
maintains the efficacv of excommunication. 
The remaining articles relate to the su¬ 
premacy of the king, the condemnation of 
Anabaptists, &c. They were ratified anew 
in 1604 and 1628. All candidates for ordi¬ 
nation must subscribe these articles. This 
formulary is now accepted by the Epis¬ 
copalian Churches of Scotland, Ireland, and 
America. 

Articles of War, a code of laws for the 
regulation of the military forces of Great 
Britain and Ireland, issued prior to 1879, 
in pursuance of the annually - renewed 
Mutiny Act. In 1879 the Army Discip¬ 
line Act consolidated the provisions of the 
Mutiny Act with the Articles of War. 
This act was amended in 1881, and now 
the complete military code is contained in 
the Army Act of 1881. 

254 



ARTICULATA-ARTISANS’ DWELLINGS ACT. 


In the United States army the Articles 
of "War form an elaborate code, thoroughly 
revised in 1880, but subject at all times to 
the legislation of Congress. 

Articula'ta, the third great section of the 
animal kingdom according to the arrange¬ 
ment of Cuvier, including all the inverte¬ 
brates with the external skeleton forming 
a series of rings articulated together and 
enveloping the body, distinct respiratory 
organs, and an internal ganglionated ner¬ 
vous system along the middle line of the 
body. They are divided into five classes, 
viz. Crustacea, Arachnida, Insecta, Myria- 
poda, and Annelida. The first four classes 
are now commonly placed together under 
the name of A rthropoda, and the whole are 
sometimes called Arthrozoa. 

Articula'tion, in anat. a joint; the join¬ 
ing or juncture of the bones. This is of 
three kinds : (1) Diarthrosis, or a movable 
connection, such as the ball-and-socket joint; 

(2) Synarthrosis, immovable connection, as 
by suture, or junction by serrated margins; 

(3) Symphysis, or union by means of another 
substance, by a cartilage, tendon, or liga¬ 
ment. 

Artillery, all sorts of great guns, can¬ 
non, or ordnance, mortars, howitzers, ma¬ 
chine-guns, &c., together with all the ap¬ 
paratus and stores thereto belonging, which 
are taken into the field, or used for besieging 
and defending fortified places. The im¬ 
provements and alterations in artillery and 
projectiles have of late years been extra¬ 
ordinary, there being in the British service 
alone over 100 patterns of modern guns. 
Of these the largest is the 111-ton gun in¬ 
tended for ships and fortresses, the next 
largest being the 100-ton gun for land ser¬ 
vice,’ and the 80-ton gun for land and sea 
service. The most important modern im¬ 
provements in artillery, besides the increase 
in size, is the general adoption of rifled 
ordnance, breech-loaders, and machine-guns. 
See Cannon, and other articles. 

The name artillery is also given to the 
land troops by whom these arms are served, 
whether they accompany an army in the 
field, take part in sieges, or occupy fixed 
posts. The British artillery is known col¬ 
lectively as the ‘Royal Regiment of Artil¬ 
lery.’ It numbers about 1400 officers and 
33,500 men, distributed in more than 200 
batteries of horse, field, and garrison artil¬ 
lery. Besides this body, the volunteer 
artillery of Britain numbers upwards of 
40,000 men. The United States govern¬ 

255 


ment has now (1891) under contract the 
manufacture of 100 breech-loading, single 
charge, steel rifled guns, of the following 
sizes: twenty-five 8-inch, fifty 10-inch, and 
twenty-five 12-inch; the cost to be $3,580,- 
337.—The name Park of Artillery is given 
to the entire train of artillery accompany¬ 
ing a military force, with the apparatus, 
ammunition, See., as well as the battalion 
appointed for its service and defence. 

Artillery, Royal Regiment of. See 
A rtillery. 

Artillery Company, The Honourable, 
the oldest existing body of volunteers in 
Great Britain, instituted in 1585; revived 
in 1610. It comprises six companies of 
infantry, besides artillery, grenadiers, light 
infantry, and yagers, and furnishes a guard 
of honour to the sovereign when visiting 
the city of London. Previous to 1842 the 
Company elected their own officers, but 
since that date they have been appointed 
by the crown. 

Artillery Schools, institutions established 
for the purpose of giving a special training 
to the officers, and in some cases the men, 
belonging to the artillery service. In Great 
Britain the artillery schools are at Woolwich 
and Shoeburyness. The Department of Ar¬ 
tillery studies at Woolwich gives artillery 
officers the means of continuing their studies 
after they have completed the usual course at 
the Royal Military College, and of qualify¬ 
ing for appointments requiring exceptional 
scientific attainments. The School of Gun¬ 
nery at Shoeburyness gives instruction in 
gunnery to officers and men, and conducts 
all experiments connected with artillery 
and stores. The sands at the mouth of the 
Thames afford ample opportunity for ar¬ 
tillery practice and firing at long ranges. 
The Royal Artillery Institution at Wool¬ 
wich contains a museum, lecture-room, and 
printing-press, from which are periodically 
issued professional and scientific papers. 

Artiodac'tyla (Gr. artios, even num¬ 
bered, daktylos, a finger or toe), a section of 
the Ungulata or hoofed mammals, compris¬ 
ing all those in which the number of the toes 
is even (two or four), including the rumi¬ 
nants, such as the ox, sheep, deer, &c., and 
also a number of non-ruminating animals, 
as the hippopotamus and the pig. 

Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act, 
an English act of parliament passed in 1868 
to empower town-councils and other local 
authorities to demolish or improve dwellings 
unfit for human habitation, and to build and 



ART0CARPACEA5 


ARUNDO. 


maintain better dwellings in lieu thereof. 
Other acts for the same object were passed 
in 1875, 1879, and 1882. 

Artocarpa'cese, a natural order of plants, 
the bread-fruit order, by some botanists 
ranked as a sub-order of the Urticacese or 
nettles. They are trees or shrubs, with a 
milky juice, which in some species hardens 
into caoutchouc, and in the cow-tree ( Brosl - 
mum Galactodendron) is a milk as good as 
that obtained from the cow. Many of the 
plants produce an edible fruit, of which the 
best known is the bread-fruit (Artocarpus). 

Artois (ar-twa), a former province of 
France, anciently one of the seventeen pro¬ 
vinces of the Netherlands, now almost com¬ 
pletely included in the department of Pas 
de Calais. 

Arts, the name given to certain branches 
of study in the middle ages, originally called 
the ‘liberal arts’ to distinguish them from 
the ‘servilearts’ or mechanical occupations. 
These arts were usually given as grammar, 
dialectics, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geo¬ 
metry, and astronomy. Hence originated 
the terms ‘art classes,’ ‘degrees in arts,’ 
‘ Master of Arts,’ &c., still in common use 
in universities, the faculty of arts being 
distinguished from those of divinity, law, 
medicine, or science. 

Art Union, an association for encourag¬ 
ing art, an object which it mainly pursues 
by disposing of pictures, sculptures, &c., by 
lottery among subscribers. They seem to 
have originated in France during the time 
of Napoleon I. They soon afterwards took 
root in Germany, where their influence has 
been most powerful and beneficial. Many 
societies of this kind exist in this country; 
but they are of a local character. 

Artvin, a Russian town, in the Caucasus, 
about 35 m. inland from Batoum. Pop. 
7850. 

Aruba (a-ro'ba), an island off the north 
coast of Venezuela, belonging to Holland 
(a dependency of Cura<;oa), about 30 m. 
long and 7 broad; surface generally rock, 
quartz being abundant, and containing con¬ 
siderable quantities of gold; a phosphate 
which is exported for manure is also abun¬ 
dant. The climate is healthy. Pop. 4500. 

Aru Islands. See Arru Islands. 

A'rum, a genus of plants, nat. order 
Aracese. A. maculatum (the common wake- 
robin, or lords-and-ladies) is abundant in 
woods and hedges in England and Ireland. 
It has acrid properties, but its corm yields 
a starch, which is known by the name of 


Portland sago or arrow-root. The dragon- 
root, or jack-in-the-pulpit, inhabitant of 
wet woodlands, is common in United States; 
fruit, a bunch of bright scarlet berries. 



Cuckoo-pint or Wake-robin (Arum maculatum).—a, Spa¬ 
dix. 66, Stamens or male flowers, c c, Ovaries or female 
flowers, d, Spathe or sheath, e, Corm. 

Ar'undel, a town in Sussex, England, on 
the river Arun, 4 miles from its mouth, the 
river being navigable to the town for vessels 
of 250 tons. The castle of Arundel, the 
chief residence of the dukes of Norfolk, 
stands on a knoll on the north-east side of 
the town. Pop. 1891, 2644. 

Ar'undel, Thomas, third son of Richard 
Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, born 1352, died 
1413. He was chancellor of England and 
Archbishop of Canterbury. He concerted 
with Bolingbroke to deliver the nation from 
the oppression of Richard II., and was a 
bitter persecutor of the Lollards and fol¬ 
lowers of Wickliffe. 

Arundelian Marbles, a series of ancient 
sculptured marbles discovered by William 
Petty, who explored the ruins of Greece at 
the expense of and for Thomas Howard, 
earl of Arundel, who lived in the time of 
James I. and Charles I., and was a liberal 
patron of scholarship and art. After the 
Restoration they were presented by the 
grandson of the collector to the University 
of Oxford. Among them is the Parian Chro¬ 
nicle, a chronological account of the prin¬ 
cipal events in Grecian, and particularly in 
Athenian history, during a period of 1318 
years, from the reign of Cecrops (b.C. 1450) 
to the archonship of Diognetus (b.c. 264). 

Arundel Society, a society instituted in 
London in 1848 for promoting the know¬ 
ledge of art by the publication of fac¬ 
similes and photographs. 

Arun'do, a genus of grasses now usually 
limited to the A. Donax and the species 

256 




ARUSPICES 


ASBESTOS. 


which most nearly agree with it, commonly 
called reeds. A . Donax is a native of the 
south of Europe, Egypt, and the East. It 
is one of the largest grasses in cultivation, 
and attains a height of 9 or 10 feet, or even 
more. Its canes or stems are used for fish¬ 
ing rods, &c. 

Aruspices (a-rus'pi-sez), Haruspices, a 
class of priests in ancient Rome, of Etrurian 
origin, whose business was to inspect the 
entrails of victims killed in sacrifice, and 
by them to foretell future events. 

Aruwimi, a large river of equatorial 
Africa, a tributary of the Congo, which it 
enters from the north. 

Arval Brothers ( Fratres Arvales), a col¬ 
lege or company of twelve members elected 
for life from the highest ranks in ancient 
Rome, so called from offering annually 
public sacrifices for the fertility of the fields 
(L. arvum, a field). 

Arve (arv), a river rising in the Savoy an 
Alps, passes through the valley of Cha- 
mouni, and falls into the Rhone nearGeneva, 
after a course of about 50 miles. 

Arvic'ola, a genus of rodent animals, sub¬ 
order Muridse or Mice. A. amphibia is the 
water-vole (or water-rat), and A. agrestis is 
the field-vole or short-tailed field-mouse. 

A'ryan, or Indo-European Family of 
Languages. See Indo-European Family. 

As, a Roman weight of 12 ounces, an¬ 
swering to the 
libra or pound, 
and equal to 237 '5 
grains avoirdu¬ 
pois, or 327T873 
grammes, French 
measure. In the 
most ancient 
times of Rome the 
copper or bronze 
coin which was 
called as actually 
weighed an as, or 
a pound, but in 
264 b.c. it was reduced to 2 oz., in 217 to 
1 oz., and in 191 to ^ oz. 

A'sa, great grandson of Solomon and 
third king of Judah; he ascended the throne 
at an early age, and distinguished himself 
by his zeal in rooting out idolatry with its 
attendant immoralities. He died after a 
prosperous reign of forty-one years. 

Asafe'tida, Asafietida, a fetid inspis¬ 
sated sap from Central Asia, the solidified 
juice of the Narthex Asafetida, a large 
umbelliferous plant. It is used in medicine 
vol. i. 257 


as an anti-spasmodic, and in cases of flatu^ 
lency, in hysteric paroxysms, and other 
nervous affections. Notwithstanding its 
very disagreeable odour it is used as a 
seasoning in the East, and sometimes in 
Europe. An inferior sort is the product of 
certain species of Ferula. 

Asagrse'a. See SabadiUa. 

Asa'ma, an active volcano of Japan, 
about 50 miles north-west of Tokio, 8260 
feet high. 

A'saph, a Levite and psalmist appointed 
by David as leading chorister in the divine 
services. His office became hereditary in 
his family, or he founded a school of poets 
and musicians, which were called, after him, 
‘ the sons of Asaph.’ 

Asaph, St., a small cathedral city and 
bishop’s see in Wales, 15 miles north-west 
of Flint; founded about 550 by St. Kenti- 
gern or St. Mungo, bishop of Glasgow, and 
named after his disciple St. Asaph, from 
whom both the diocese and town took their 
name. The cathedral was built about the 
close of the fifteenth century; it consists of 
a choir, a nave, two aisles, and a transept. 
Pop. 1900. 

Asarabac'ca, a small hardy European 
plant, nat. order Aristolochiaceae (Asdrum 
europceum). Its leaves are acrid, bitter, 
and nauseous, and its root is extremely 
acrid. Both the leaves and root were for¬ 
merly used as an emetic. The species A. 
canadense, the Canada snake-root, is found 
in the Western States. 

As'arum. See Asarabacca. 

Asben, Air, or Ahir, a kingdom of 
Africa, in the Sahara, between lat. 16° 15' 
and 20 Q 15' N., and Ion. 6° 15' and 9° 30' E. 
It consists of a succession of mountain 
groups and valleys, with a generally western 
slope, and attains in its highest summits 
a height of over 5000 feet. The valleys, 
though separated by complete deserts, are 
very fertile, and often of picturesque ap¬ 
pearance. The inhabitants are Tuaregs or 
Berbers, with an admixture of negro blood. 
They live partly in villages, partly as no¬ 
mads. It is nominally ruled over by a 
sultan, who resides in the capital, Agades. 
Pop. about 60,000. 

Asbes'tos, Asbestus, a remarkable and 
highly useful mineral, a fibrous variety of 
several members of the hornblende family, 
composed of separable filaments, with a silky 
lustre. The fibres are sometimes delicate, 
flexible, and elastic; at other times stiff and 
brittle. It is incombustible, and anciently 

17 





ASBJOIINSEN 


ASCHAM. 


was wrought into a soft, flexible cloth, 
which was used as a shroud for dead bodies. 
In modern times it has been manufactured 
into incombustible cloth, gloves, felt, paper, 
&c.; is employed in gas-stoves; is much used 
as a covering to steam boilers and pipes; is 
mixed with metallic pigments, and used as 
a paint on wooden structures, roofs, parti¬ 
tions, &c., to render them fireproof, and is 
employed in various other ways, the manu¬ 
facture having recently greatly developed. 
Some varieties are compact and take a fine 
polish, others are loose, like flax or silky wool. 
Ligniform asbestos, or mountain-wood, is a 
vai’iety presenting an irregular filamentous 
structure, like wood. Rock-cork, mountain- 
leather, fossil-paper, and fossil-flax are 
varieties. Asbestos is found in many parts 
of the world, chiefly in connection with ser¬ 
pentine. 

Asbjornsen (as'byeurn-sen), Peter Kris¬ 
ten, born 1812, died 1885, a distinguished 
Norwegian naturalist and collector of the 
popular tales and legends, fairy stories, &c., 
of his native country. 

Asbury Park, a small town on the coast 
of New Jersey, U.S., a great summer resort, 
its pop. being then increased from 4000 to 
20,000 or 25,000. 

As'calon, or Ash'kelon, a ruined town 
of Palestine, on the sea-coast, 40 miles 
w.s.w. of Jerusalem. It was occupied by 
the Crusaders under Richard I. after a great 
battle with Saladin (1192). 

Asca'nius, the son of /Eneas and Creusa, 
and the companion of his father’s wander¬ 
ings from Troy to Italy. 

As'caris, a genus of intestinal worms. 
See Nematelmia. 

Ascen'sion (discovered on Ascension Day), 
an island of volcanic origin belonging to 
Britain, near the middle of the South At¬ 
lantic Ocean, about lat. 7° 55' S.; Ion. 14° 
25' w.; 800 miles north-west of St. Helena; 
area, about 36 square miles; pop. 165. It 
is retained by Britain mainly as a station 
at which ships may touch for stores. It 
has a steam factory, naval and victualling 
yards, hospitals, and a coal depot. It is 
celebrated for its turtle, which are the finest 
in the world. Wild goats are plentiful, and 
oxen, sheep, pheasants, Guinea-fowl, and 
rabbits have been introduced, and thrive 
well. Georgetown, the seat of government, 
stands on the west side of the island, which 
is governed under the admiralty by a naval 
officer. 

Ascension, Right, of a star, in astron., 


the arc of the equator intercepted between 
the first point of Aries and that point of 
the equator which comes to the meridian at 
the same instant with the star. 

Ascension Day, the day on which the 
ascension of the Saviour is commemorated, 
often called Holy Thursday: a movable 
feast, always falling on the Thursday but 
one before Whitsuntide. 

Ascet'ics, a name given in ancient times 
to those Christians who devoted themselves 
to severe exercises of piety and strove to 
distinguish themselves from the world by 
abstinence from sensual enjoyments and by 
voluntary penances. Ascetics and asceti¬ 
cism have played an important part in the 
Christian church, but the principle of striv¬ 
ing after a higher and more spiritual life by 
subduing the animal appetites and passions 
has no necessary connection with Christi¬ 
anity. Thus there were ascetics among 
the Jews previous to Christ, and asceticism 
was inculcated by the Stoics, while in its 
most extreme form it may still be seen 
among the Brahmans and Buddhists. Mon- 
asticism was but one phase of asceticism. 

Asch (ash), a town of Austria-Hungary, 
in the extreme north-western corner of Bo¬ 
hemia, with manufactures of cotton, woollen, 
and silk goods, bleachfields, dye-works, &c. 
Pop. 13,209. 

Aschaffenburg (a-shaf'en-bor/t), a town 
of Bavaria, on the Main and Aschaff, 26 
miles e.s.e. of Frankfort. The chief edi¬ 
fice is the castle of Johannisberg, built in 
1605-14, and for centuries the summer resi¬ 
dence of the elector. There are manufac¬ 
tures of coloured paper, tobacco, liqueurs, 
&c. Pop. 12,611. 

Ascham (as'kam), Roger, a learned 
Englishman, born in 1515 of a respectable 
family in Yorkshire, died 1568. He was 
entered at Cambridge, 1530, and was chosen 
fellow in 1534 and tutor in 1537. He 
became Latin secretary to Edward VI. and 
also to Mary. Was preceptor to Elizabeth 
during her girlhood and her secretary after 
she ascended the throne. In 1544 he wrote 
his Toxophilus, or Schole of Shooting, in 
praise of his favourite amusement and exer¬ 
cise—archery. In 1563-68 he wrote his 
Schoolmaster, a treatise on the best method 
of teaching children Latin. Some of his 
writings, including many letters, were in 
Latin. He wrote the best English style 
of his time. His life was written by Dr. 
Johnson to accompany an edition of his 
works published in 1769. 

258 



ASCHERSLEBEN-ASGARD s 


Aschersleben (ash'erz-la-ben), a town of 
Prussian Saxony, in the district of Magde¬ 
burg, near the junction of the Eine with the 
Wipper. Industries: woollens,machinery and 
metal goods, sugar, paper, &c. Pop. 21,519. 

Ascidia (Greek, askos, a wine-skin), the 
name given to the ‘ Sea-squirts ’ or main 
section of the Tunicata, molluscous animals 
of low grade, resembling a double-necked 
bottle, of a leathery or gristly nature, found 
at low-water mark on the sea-beach, and 



Ascidians. 


1, Perophora: a, mouth; b , vent; c, intestinal canal; 
d, Btomach; e, common tubular stem. 2, Ascidia 
echinata. 3, Ascidia virginea. 4, Cynthia quadran- 
gularis. 5, Botryllus violaceus. 

dredged from deep water attached to stones, 
shells, and fixed objects. One of the pro¬ 
minent openings admits the food and the 
water required in respiration, the other is 
the excretory aperture. A single ganglion 
represents the nervous system, placed be¬ 
tween the two apertures. Male and female 
reproductive organs exist in each ascidian. 
They pass through peculiar phases of devel¬ 
opment, the young ascidian appearing like 
a tadpole body. They may be single or 
simple , social or compound. In social ascid¬ 
ians the peduncles of a number of individuals 
are united into a common tubular stem, with 
a partial common circulation of blood. In 
these animals evolutionists see a link between 
the Mollusca and the Vertebrata. 

Asclepiada'cese, an order of gamopetalous 
exogenous plants, the distinguishing charac¬ 
teristic of which is that the anthers adhere 
to the five stigmatic processes, the whole 
sexual apparatus forming a single mass. 
The members of this order are shrubs, or 
sometimes herbaceous plants, occasionally 
climbing, almost always with a milky juice. 
Many of them are employed as purgatives, 

259 


diaphoretics, tonics, and febrifuges, and 
others as articles of food. Asclepias is the 
typical genus. See Asclepias, Calotropis, 
Stapelia, Stephanotis. 

Ascle'piades (-dez), the name of a number 
of ancient Greek writers — poets, gramma¬ 
rians, &c.—of whom little is known, and 
also of several ancient physicians, the most 
celebrated of whom was Asclepiades, of 
Bithynia, who acquired considerable repute 
at Rome about the beginning of the first 
century B.c. 

Ascle'pias, or Swallow-wort, a genus of 
plants, the type and the largest genus of the 
nat. order Asclepiadacere. Most of the spe¬ 
cies are North American herbs, having oppo¬ 
site, alternate, or verticillate leaves. Many 
of them possess powerful medicinal quali¬ 
ties. A. decumbens is diaphoretic and sudo¬ 
rific, and has the singular property of excit¬ 
ing general perspiration without increasing 
in any sensible degree the heat of the body; 
A. curassavica is emetic, and its roots are 
frequently sent to England as ipecacuanha; 
the roots of A. tuberosa are famed for diapho¬ 
retic properties. Many other species are also 
used as medicines, and several are culti¬ 
vated for the beauty of their flowers. 

As'coli, or Ascoli Piceno (anc . AscUlum), 
town in Middle Italy, capital of the province 
of the same name, on the Tronto, 14 miles 
above its embouchure in the Adriatic. It 
has old bridges, walls, and gates, a fine 
cathedral, &c. Pop. 11,199.—The province 
has an area of 809 sq. miles, a pop. of 
222,146. 

As'coli Satriano (anc. Asculum Apulum ), 
a town of S. Italy, prov. Foggia. Pop. 6478. 

Ascomyce'tes (-tez), a large group of fungi, 
so called from their spores being contained 
in asci or sacs. 

Asco'nius (Quintus A. Pedianus), a. 
Roman writer of the first century after- 
Christ, who wrote a life of Sallust, a reply 
to the detractors of Virgil, and commenta¬ 
ries to Cicero’s orations, some of which are- 
extant. 

As'cot, an English race-course adjacent 
to the s.w. extremity of the great park of 
Windsor. The races, which take place in 
the second week in June, constitute, for 
value of stakes and quality of horses, the 
best meeting of the year, as it is the most, 
fashionable. 

As'gard (lit. gods’ yard, or the abode of 
the gods), in Scand. myth, the home of the 
gods or AEsir , rising, like the Greek Olym¬ 
pus, from midgard , or the middle world, that . 







ASGILL 


is, the earth. It was here that Odin and 
the rest of the gods, the twelve .Esir, 
dwelt—the gods in the mansion called 
Gladsheim, the goddesses dwelling in Yin- 
gulf. Walhalla, in which heroes slain in 
battle dwelt, was also here. Below the 
boughs of the ash-tree Yggdrasill the gods 
assembled every day in council. 

Asgill (as'gil), John, an eccentric Eng¬ 
lish writer, a lawyer by profession; born 
1659, died 1738. In 1699 he published a 
pamphlet to prove that Christians were 
not necessarily liable to death, death being 
the penalty imposed for Adam’s sin and 
Christ having satisfied the law. Having 
crossed over to Ireland, he was beginning 
to get into a good practice, and was elected 
to the Irish House of Commons, when his 
pamphlet was ordered to be burned by the 
public hangman, and he himself was ex¬ 
pelled the house. His whole subsequent 
life was passed in pecuniary and other 
troubles, mostly in the Fleet or within the 
rules of the King’s Bench. 

Ash (Fraxlnus), a genus of deciduous 
trees belonging to the nat. order Oleaceae, 
having imperfect flowers and a seed-vessel 
prolonged into a thin wing at the apex (called 
a samara ). There are a good many species, 
chiefly indigenous to Europe and North 
America. The common ash (F. excelsior), 
indigenous to Britain, has a smooth bark, 
and grows tall and rather slender. The 
branches are flattened; the leaves have five 
pairs of pinnae, terminated by an odd one, 
dark-green in colour; lanceolate, with ser¬ 
rated edges. The flowers are produced in 
loose spikes from the sides of the branches, 
and are succeeded by flat seeds which ripen 
in autumn. It is one of the most useful of 
British trees on account of the excellence of 
its hard tough wood and the rapidity of its 
growth. There are many varieties of it, as 
the weeping-ash, the curled-leaved ash, the 
entire-leaved ash, &c. The flowering or 
mantia ash (F. Ornus), by some placed in a 
distinct genus (Ornus), is a native of the 
south of Europe and Palestine. It yields 
the substance called manna, which is ob¬ 
tained by making incisions in the bark, 
when the juice exudes and hardens. Among 
American species are the white ash (F. ame- 
ricana), with lighter bark and leaves; the 
red or black ash (F. pubescens), with a 
brown bark; the black ash (F. sambuci- 
folia ), the blue ash, the green ash, &c. They 
are all valuable trees. The mountain-ash 
or rowan belongs to a different order. 


ASHANTEE. 

Ash, Ashes, the incombustible residue of 
organic bodies (animal or vegetable) remain¬ 
ing after combustion; in common usage, any 
incombustible residue of bodies used as 
fuel; as a commercial term, the word 
generally means the ashes of vegetable 
substances, from which are extracted the 
alkaline matters called potash, pearl-ash, 
kelp, barilla, &c. 

Ashan'go, a region in the interior of South¬ 
ern Africa between lat. 1° and 2° S., and 
between the Ogowe and the Lower Congo, 
a mountainous country in the territory 
recently taken into the possession of the 
French. The inhabitants belong to the 
Bantu stock, and among them are a dwarfish 
people, the Obongo, said to be about 4^ 
feet high at most. 

Ashantee', a kingdom of West Africa, in 
the interior of the Cold Coast, and to the 
north of the river Prah, with an area of 
about 70,000 sq. miles. It is in great part 
hilly, well-watered, and covered with dense 
tropical vegetation. The country round the 
towns, however, is carefully cultivated. The 
crops are chiefly rice, maize, millet, sugar¬ 
cane, and yams, the last forming the staple 
vegetable food of the natives. The domestic 
animals are cows, horses of small size, goats, 
and a species of hairy sheep. The larger 
wild animals are the elephant, rhinoceros, 
giraffe, buffalo, lion, hippopotamus, &c. 
Birds of all kinds are numerous, and croco¬ 
diles and other reptiles abound. Cold is 
abundant, being found either in the form 
of dust or in nuggets. The Ashantees are 
warlike and ferocious, with a love of shed¬ 
ding human blood amounting to a passion, 
human sacrifices being common. Poly¬ 
gamy is practised by them to an enormous 
extent. They make excellent cotton cloths, 
articles in gold, and good earthenware, 
tan leather, and make sword-blades of 
superior workmanship. The government is 
a despotic monarchy. The chief town is 
Coomassie, which, before being burned 
down in 1874, was well and regularly built 
with wide streets, and had from 70,000 to 
100,000 inhabitants. The British first came 
in contact with the Ashantees in 1807, 
and hostilities continued off and on till 
1826, when they were driven from the sea- 
coast. Immediately after the transfer of 
the Hutch settlements on the Gold Coast 
to Britain in 1872—when the entire coast 
remained in British hands—the Ashautees 
reclaimed the sovereignty of the tribes 
round the settlement of Elmina. This 

260 



ASHBORNE-ASH-WEDNESDAY. 


brought on a sanguinary war, leading to a 
British expedition in 1874, in which Coo- 
massie was captured, and British suprem¬ 
acy established along the Gold Coast. 
Pop. estimated at between 1,000,000 and 
2 , 000 , 000 . 

Ash'bome, a town of England, in Derby¬ 
shire, 12 miles N. w. of Derby, with manu¬ 
factures of cottons and lace. Pop. 3485. 

Ash burton, a town in Devonshire, Eng¬ 
land, 16 m. s.w. of Exeter, a pari. bor. till 
1868, and still giving name to a pari, 
division. Pop. about 2900. 

Ash'burton, Alexander Baring, Lord, a 
British statesman and financier, born 1774, 
died 1864. A younger son of Sir Francis 
Baring, he was bred to commercial pursuits, 
which for some years kept him in the 
United States and Canada, and in 1810 he 
became head of the great firm of Baring 
Brothers & Co. After serving in Parlia¬ 
ment for many years he was raised to the 
peerage in 1835, after being a member of 
Peel’s government (1834-35). See next 
art. 

Ash'burton Treaty, a treaty concluded 
at Washington, 1842, by Alexander Baring, 
Lord Ashburton, and the President of the 
United States; it defined the boundaries 
between the States and Canada, &c. 

Ashby-de-la-Zouch (ash'bi-del-a-zoch'), 
a town in Leicestershire, England, on the 
borders of Derbyshire, with manufactures 
of hosiery, leather, &c. Pop. 4536. 

Ash'dod, a place on the coast of Palestine, 
formerly one of the chief cities of the Phil¬ 
istines, now an insignificant village. 

Asheville, a thriving town in North 
Carolina, capital of Buncomb county, 115 
miles west of Raleigh, has 2 banks and 
3 weekly papers. Pop. in 1890,10,235. 

Ashe'ra, an ancient Semitic goddess, 
whose symbol was the phallus. In the 
Revised Version of the Old Testament this 
word is used to translate what in the ordi¬ 
nary version is translated ‘grove,’ as con¬ 
nected with the idolatrous practices into 
which the Jews were prone to fall. 

Ash'es. See Ash. 

Ash'ford, a thriving town of England, in 
Kent, situated near the confluence of the 
upper branches of the river Stour, with 
large locomotive and rail way-carriage works. 
It gives name to a pari. div. of the county. 
Pop. 1891, 10,728. 

Ashi'ra, a mountainous country of West¬ 
ern Equatorial Africa, to the south of the 
Ogowe river, the inhabitants of which are 

261 


said to be industrious, peaceable, and intel¬ 
ligent. 

Ash'land, a town of the U. States, in the 
anthracite region of Pennsylvania. Pop. 
1890, 7346. 

Ashland, Ashland co., Wis., on Lake Su¬ 
perior, has rapidly increased in popula¬ 
tion ; a prosperous town. Pop. 1S90, 9956. 

Ashley, Lord. See Shaftesbury , First 
Earl of. 

Ash'mole, Elias, English antiquary, born 
1617, died 1692. He became a chancery 
solicitor in London, but afterwards studied 
at Oxford, taking up mathematics, physics, 
chemistry, and particularly astrology. He 
published Theatrum Chymieum in 1652. 
On the Restoration he received the post of 
Windsor herald, and other appointments 
both honourable and lucrative. In 1672 
appeared his History of the Order of the 
Garter. He presented to the University of 
Oxford his collection of rarities, to which 
he afterwards added his books and MSS., 
thereby commencing the Ashmolean Mu¬ 
seum. 

Ash'taroth, a goddess worshipped by the 
ancient Canaanites, and regarded as symbol¬ 
izing the productive powers of nature, being 
probably the same as Astarte (which see). 
Ashtaroth is a plural form, the singular 
being Ashtoreth. 

Ashton-in-Makerfield, a town of Lanca¬ 
shire, England, 4 miles from Wigan, with 
collieries, cotton-mills, &c. Pop. 13,379. 

Ashton-under-Lyne, a municipal and 
pari. bor. of Lancashire, England (the pari, 
borough being partly in Cheshire), 6 miles 
east of Manchester, on the north bank of the 
river Tame, a well-built place, wdth hand¬ 
some streets and public buildings. 'J he 
chief employment is the cotton manufac¬ 
ture, but there are also collieries and iron¬ 
works, which employ a great many persons. 
Pop. of paid, bor.,47,322; of mun. bor., 40,494. 

Ashtabula, O., town of Ashtabula counrv, 
55 miles northeast of Cleveland ; contains 
various manufactories. Pop. 8338. 

Ash-Wednesday, the first day of Lent, 
so called from a custom in the Western 
Church of sprinkling ashes that day on the 
heads of penitents, then admitted to penance. 
The period at which the fast of Ash-Wednes¬ 
day was instituted is uncertain. In the 
R. Catholic Church the ashes are now strewn 
on the heads of all the clergy and people 
present. In the Anglican Church Ash- 
Wednesday is regarded as an important fast 
day. 



ASIA. 


Asia, the largest of the great divisions of 
the earth ; length, from the extreme south¬ 
western point of Arabia, at the strait of Bab¬ 
el-Mandeb, to the extreme north-eastern 
point of Siberia—East Cape, or Cape Vos- 
tochni, in Behring’s Strait, 6900 miles; 
breadth, from Cape Chelyuskin, in Northern 
Siberia, to Cape Romania, the southern ex¬ 
tremity of the Malay Peninsula, 5300 miles; 
area estimated at 17,296,000 square miles, 
about a third of all the land of the earth’s 
surface. On three sides, N., E., and s., the 
ocean forms its natural boundary, while in 
the w. the frontier is marked mainly by the 
Ural Mountains, the Ural River, Caspian 
Sea, the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Medi¬ 
terranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea. 
There is no proper separation between Asia 
and Europe, the latter being really a great 
peninsula of the former. Asia, though not 
so irregular in shape as Europe, is broken 
in the s. by three great peninsulas, Arabia, 
Hindustan, and Farther India, while the east 
coast presents peninsular projections and is¬ 
lands, forming a series of sheltered seas and 
bays, the principal peninsulas being Kamt- 
chatka and Corea. The principal islands are 
those forming the Malay or Asiatic Archi¬ 
pelago, which stretch round in a wide curve 
on the s.E. of the continent. Besides the 
largerislands—Sumatra, Java, Borneo,Cele¬ 
bes, Mindanao, and Luzon (in the Philippine 
group)—there are countless smaller islands 
grouped round these. Other islands are 
Ceylon, in the s. of India; the Japanese 
islands and Sakhalin on the east of the 
continent; Formosa, s.E. of China; Cyprus, 
s. of Asia Minor; and New Siberia and 
Wrangell Land, in the Arctic Ocean. 

The mountain systems of Asia are of great 
extent, and their culminating points are the 
highest in the world. The greatest of all 
is the Himalayan system, which lies mainly 
between Ion. 70 J and 100 J E. and lat. 28 J and 
37° N. It extends, roughly speaking, from 
north-west to south-east, its total length 
being about 1500 miles, forming the northern 
barrier of Hindustan. The loftiest summits 
are Mount Everest, 29,002 feet high, another 
peak 28,265, and Kanchinjiuga, 28,156. The 
principal passes, which rise to the height of 
18,000 to 20,000 feet, are the highest in the 
world. A second great mountain system of 
Central Asia, connected with the north-wes¬ 
tern extremity of the Himalayan system by 
the elevated region of Pamir (about Ion. 70°- 
75 J E., lat. 37 J -4(F N.), is the Thian-Shan 
system, which runs north-eastward for a 


distance of 1200 miles. In this direction 
the Altai, Sayan, and other ranges continue 
the line of elevations to the north-eastern 
coast. A north-western continuation of the 
Himalayas is the Hindu Kush, and farther 
westward a connection may be traced be¬ 
tween the Himalayan mass and the Elburz 
range (18,460 ft.), south of the Caspian, and 
thence to the mountains of Kurdistan, Ar¬ 
menia, and Asia Minor. 

There are vast plateaux and elevated 
valley regions connected with the great 
central mountain systems, but large portions 
of the continent are low and flat. Tibet 
forms the most elevated table-land in Asia, 
its mean height being estimated at 15,000 
feet. On its south is the Himalayan range, 
while the Kuen-Lun range forms its north¬ 
ern barrier. Another great but much lower 
plateau is that which comprises Afghan¬ 
istan, Beluchistan, and Persia, and which 
to the north-west joins into the plateau of 
Asia Minor. The principal plain of Asia 
is that of Siberia, which extends along the 
north of the continent and forms an immense 
alluvial tract sloping to the Arctic Ocean. 
Vast swamps or peat-mosses called tundras 
cover large portions of this region. South¬ 
west of Siberia, and stretching eastward 
from the Caspian, is a low-lying tract con¬ 
sisting to a great extent of steppes and 
deserts, and including in its area the Sea of 
Aral. In the east of China there is an allu¬ 
vial plain of some 200,000 square miles in 
extent; in Hindustan are plains extending 
for 2000 miles along the south slope of the 
Himalayas; and between Arabia and Per¬ 
sia, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, 
is the plain of Mesopotamia or Assyria, one 
of the richest in the world. Of the deserts 
of Asia the largest is that of Gobi (Ion. 
9(F-120 o E., lat. 40°-48° N.), large portions 
of which are covered with nothing but 
sand or display a surface of bare rock. An 
almost continuous desert region may also 
be traced from the desert of North Africa 
through Arabia (which is largely occupied 
by bare deserts), Persia, and Beluchistan 
to the Indus. 

Some of the largest rivers of Asia flow 
northward to the Arctic Ocean—the Obi, 
the Yenisei, and the Lena. The Hoang- 
Ho and Yang-tse, and the Amoor, are the 
chief of those which flow into the Pacific. 
The Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irawaddy, and 
Indus empty into the Indian Ocean. The 
Persian Gulf receives the united waters of 
the Euphrates and the Tigris. There are 

262 



Gehhie & Co. Philadelphia 

























































ASIA. 


several systems of inland drainage, large 
rivers falling into lakes which have no outlet. 

The largest lake of Asia (partly also 
European) is the Caspian Sea, which re¬ 
ceives the Kur from the Caucasus (with 
its tributary the Aras from Armenia), and 
the Sefid Rud and other streams from 
Persia (besides the Volga from European 
Russia, and the Ural, which is partly Euro¬ 
pean, partly Asiatic). The Caspian lies in 
the centre of a great depression, being 83 
feet below the level of the Sea of Azof. 
East from the Caspian is the Sea of Aral, 
which, like the Caspian, has no outlet, and 
is fed by the rivers Amoo Daria (Oxus) and 
Syr Daria. Still farther east, to the north 
of the Thian-Shan Mountains, and fed by 
the Ili and other streams, is Lake Balkash, 
also without an outlet and very salt. Other 
lakes having no communication with the' 
ocean are Lob Nor, in the desert of Gobi, 
receiving the river Tarim, and the Dead Sea, 
far below the level of the Mediterranean, 
and fed by the Jordan. The chief fresh¬ 
water lake is Lake Baikal, in the south of 
Siberia, between Ion. 104° and 110° E., a 
mountain lake from which the Yenisei draws 
a portion of its waters. 

Geologically speaking large areas of Asia 
are of comparatively recent date, the low¬ 
lands of Siberia, for instance, being sub¬ 
merged during the tertiary period, if not 
more recently. Many geologists believe 
that subsequently to the glacial period there 
was a great sea in Western Asia, of which 
the Caspian and Aral Seas are the remains. 
The desiccation of Central Asia is still going 
on, as is also probably the upheaval of a 
great part of the continent. The great 
mountain chains and elevated plateaux are 
of ancient origin, however, and in them 
granite and other crystalline rocks are 
largely represented. Active volcanoes are 
only met with in the extreme east (Kamt- 
chatka) and in the Eastern Archipelago. 
From the remotest times Asia has been 
celebrated for its mineral wealth. In the 
Altai and Ural Mountains gold, iron, lead, 
and platinum are found; in India and other 
parts rubies, diamonds, and other gems are, 
or have been, procured; salt in Central 
Asia; coal in China, India, Central Asia, 
&c.; petroleum in the districts about the 
Caspian and in Burmah; bitumen in Syria; 
while silver, copper, sulphur, &c., are found 
in various parts. 

Every variety of climate may be experi¬ 
enced in Asia, but as a whole it is marked 

263 


by extremes of heat and cold and by great 
dryness, this in particular being the case 
with vast regions in the centre of the con¬ 
tinent and distant from the sea. The great 
lowland region of Siberia has a short but 
very hot summer, and a long but intensely 
cold winter, the rivers and their estuaries 
being fast bound with ice, and at a certain 
depth the soil is hard frozen all the year 
round. The northern part of China to the 
east of Central Asia has a temperate climate 
with a warm summer, and in the extreme 
north a severe winter. The districts lying 
to the south of the central region, compris¬ 
ing the Indian and Indo-Chinese penin¬ 
sulas, Southern China, and the adjacent 
islands, present the characteristic climate 
and vegetation of the southern temperate 
and tropical regions modified by the effects 
of altitude. Some localities in South¬ 
eastern Asia have the heaviest rainfall 
anywhere known. As the equator is ap¬ 
proached the extremes of temperature 
diminish till at the southern extremity of 
the continent they are such as may be ex¬ 
perienced in any tropical country. Among 
climatic features are the monsoons of the 
Indian Ocean and the eastern seas, and the 
cyclones or typhoons, which are often very 
destructive. 

The plants and animals of Northern and 
Western Asia generally resemble those of 
similar latitudes in Europe (which is really 
a prolongation of the Asiatic continent), 
differing more in species than in genera. 
The principal mountain trees are the pine, 
larch, and birch; the willow, alder, and 
poplar are found in lower grounds. In the 
central region European species reach as 
far as the Western and Central Himalayas, 
but are rare in the Eastern. They are 
here met by Chinese and Japanese forms. 
The lower slopes of the Himalayas are 
clothed almost exclusively with tropical 
forms. Higher up, between 4000 and 10,000 
feet, are found all the types of trees and 
plants that belong to the temperate zone, 
there being extensive forests of conifers. 
Here is the native home of the deodar 
cedar. The south-eastern region, including 
India, the Eastern Peninsula, and China, 
with the islands, contains a vast variety 
of plants useful to man and having here 
their original habitat, such as the sugar¬ 
cane, rice, cotton, and indigo, pepper, 
cinnamon, cassia, clove, nutmeg, and car¬ 
damoms, banana, cocoa-nut, areca and sago 
palms; the mango and many other fruits, 


ASIA. 


with plants producing a vast number of 
drugs, caoutchouc and gutta-percha. The 
forests of India and the Malay Peninsula 
contain oak, teak, sftl, and other timber 
woods, besides bamboos, palms, sandal¬ 
wood, &c. The palmyra palm is charac¬ 
teristic of Southern India; while the talipot 
palm flourishes on the western coast of 
Hindustan, Ceylon, and the Malay Penin¬ 
sula. The cultivated plants of India and 
China include wheat, barley, rice, maize, 
millet, sorghum, tea, coffee, indigo, cotton, 
jute, opium, tobacco, &e. In North China 
and the Japanese Islands large numbers 
of deciduous trees occur, such as oaks, 
maples, limes, walnuts, poplars and willows, 
the genera being European, but the indi¬ 
vidual species Asiatic. Among cultivated 
plants are wheat, and in favourable situa¬ 
tions rice, cotton, the vine, &c. Coffee, rice, 
maize, &c., are extensively grown in some 
of the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago. 
In Arabia and the warmer valleys of Persia, 
Afghanistan, and Beluchistan, aromatic 
shrubs are abundant. Over large parts of 
these regions the date-palm flourishes and 
affords a valuable article of food. Gum- 
producing acacias are, with the date-palm, 
the commonest trees in Arabia. African 
forms are found extending from the Sahara 
along the desert region of Asia. 

Nearly all the mammals of Europe occur 
in Northern Asia, with numerous additions 
to the species. Central Asia is the native 
land of the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, 
and the goat. Both varieties of the camel, 
the single and the double humped, are Asi¬ 
atic. To the inhabitants of Tibet and the 
higher plateaux of the Himalayas the yak 
is what the reindeer is to the tribes of the 
Siberian plain, almost their sole wealth 
and support. The elephant, of a different 
species from that of Africa, is a native of 
tropical Asia. The Asiatic lion, which 
inhabits Arabia, Persia, Asia Minor, Belu¬ 
chistan, and some parts of India, is smaller 
than the African species. Bears are found 
in all parts, the white bear in the far north, 
and other species in the more temperate 
and tropical parts. The tiger is the most 
characteristic of the larger Asiatic Carni- 
vora. It extends from Armenia across the 
entire continent, being absent, however, 
from the greater portion of Siberia and from 
the high table-land of Tibet; it extends 
also into Sumatra, Java, and Bali. In 
South-eastern Asia and the islands we find 
the rhinoceros, buffalo, ox, deer, squirrels, 


porcupines, &c. In birds nearly every 
order is represented. Among the most 
interesting forms are the hornbills, the pea¬ 
cock, the Impey pheasant, the tragopan or 
horned pheasant, and other gallinaceous 
birds, the pheasant family being very char¬ 
acteristic of South-eastern Asia. It was 
from Asia that the common domestic fowl 
was introduced into Europe. The tropical 
parts of Asia abound in monkeys, of which 
the species are numerous. Some are tailed, 
others, such as the orang, are tailless, but 
none have prehensile tails li'.ce the Ameri¬ 
can monkeys. In the Malay Archipelago 
marsupial animals, so characteristic of 
Australia, first occur in the Moluccas and 
Celebes, while various mammals common 
in the western part of the Archipelago are 
absent. A similar transition towards the 
Australian type takes place in the species 
of birds. (See Wallace’s Line.) Of marine 
mammals the dugong is peculiar to the 
Indian Ocean; in the Ganges is found a 
peculiar species of dolphin. At the head 
of the reptiles stands the Gangetic croco¬ 
dile, frequenting the Ganges and other 
large rivers. Among the serpents are the 
cobra da capello, one of the most deadly 
snakes in existence; there are also large 
boas and pythons besides sea and fresh¬ 
water snakes. The seas and rivers produce 
a great variety of fish. The Salmonidse are 
found in the rivers flowing into the Arctic 
Ocean. Two rather remarkable fishes are 
the climbing perch and the archer-fish. 
The well-known goldfish is a native of 
China. 

Asia is mainly peopled by races belonging 
to two great ethnographic types, the Caucasic 
or fair type, and the Mongolic or yellow. 
To the former belong the Aryan or Indo- 
European, and the Semitic races, both of 
which mainly inhabit the south-west of the 
continent; to the latter belong the Malays 
and Indo-Chinese in the s.E., as well as the 
Mongolians proper (Chinese, &c.), occupying 
nearly all the rest of the continent. To 
these may be added certain races of doubtful 
affinities, as the Dravidians of Southern 
India, the Cingalese of Ceylon, the Ainos of 
Yesso, and some negro-like tribes called 
Negritos, which inhabit Malacca and the 
interior of several of the islands of the 
Eastern Archipelago. The total population 
is estimated at about 800,000,000, or more 
than half that of the whole world. A large 
portion of Asia is under the dominion of 
European powers. Russia possesses the 

264 


ASIA. 


whole of Northern Asia (Siberia) and a 
considerable portion of Central Asia, to¬ 
gether with a great part of ancient Arme¬ 
nia, on the south of the Caucasus (pop. 
16,000,000); Turkey holds Asia Minor, 
Syria and Palestine, part of Arabia, Meso¬ 
potamia, &c. (pop. 16,000,000) ; Great 
Britain rules over India, Ceylon, a part of 
the I Indo-Chinese Peninsula (Upper and 
Lower Burmah), and several other posses¬ 
sions (pop. 290,000,000); France has ac¬ 
quired a considerable portion of the Indo- 
Chinese Peninsula, and has one or two other 
settlements (pop. 18,000,000); while to 
Holland belong Java, Sumatra, and other 
islands or parts of islands, and to Spain the 
Philippines. The chief independent states 
are the Chinese Empire(pop. 386,000,000), Ja¬ 
pan (pop 40,000,000), Siam (pop. 6,000,000), 
Afghanistan (5,000,000), Beluchistan, Per¬ 
sia (pop. 7,000,000), and the Arabian states 
(8,000,000). The most important of the 
religions of Asia are the Brahmanism of 
India, the creeds of Buddha, Confucius, and 
Lao-tse in China, and the various forms of 
Mohammedanism in Arabia, Persia, India, 
&c. Probably more than a half of the 
whole population profess some form of 
Buddhism. Several native Christian sects 
are found in India, Armenia, Kurdistan, 
and Syria. 

Asia is generally regarded as the cradle 
of the human race. It possesses the oldest 
historical documents, and next to the im¬ 
mediately contiguous kingdom of Egypt 
the oldest historical monuments in the 
world. The Old Testament contains the 
oldest historical records which we have of 
any nation in the form of distinct narrative. 
The period at which Moses wrote was pro¬ 
bably 1500 or 1600 years before the Chris¬ 
tian era. His and the later Jewish writings 
confine themselves almost exclusively to 
the history of the Hebrews; but in Baby¬ 
lonia, as in Egypt, civilization had made 
great advances long before this time. The 
earliest seat of the Aryan race was pro¬ 
bably on the banks of the Oxus. Hence, 
perhaps from the pressure of the Mongolian 
tribes to the north, they spread themselves 
to the south-east and south-west, finally 
occupying Northern India, Persia, and other 
parts of Western Asia, and spreading into 
Europe, perhaps about 2000-1500 b.c. 
In China authentic history extends back 
probably to about 1000 B.C., with a long 
preceding period of which the names of 
dynasties are preserved without chronologi- 

265 


cal arrangement. The kingdoms of Assyria, 
Babylonia, Media, and Persia, alternately 
predominated in South-western Asia. In 
regard to the history of these monarchies 
much light has been obtained from the 
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. 
The arms of the Pharaohs extended into 
Asia, but their conquests there were short¬ 
lived. From Cyrus (b.c. 559), who ex¬ 
tended the empire of Persia from the Indus 
to the Mediterranean, while his son, Cam- 
byses, added Egypt and Lybia to it, to the 
conquest of Alexander (b.c. 330), Persia 
was the dominant power in Western Asia. 
Alexander’s great empire became broken up 
into separate kingdoms, which were finally 
absorbed in the Roman Empire, and this 
ultimately extended to the Tigris. Soon 
after the most civilized portions of the three 
continents had been reduced under one em¬ 
pire the great event took place which forms 
the dividing line of history, the birth of Christ 
and the spread of Christianity. In a.d. 226 
a protracted struggle began between the 
newer Persian empire and the Romans, 
which lasted till the advent of Mohammed, 
and the conquests of the Arabians. Persia 
was the first great conquest of Mohammed’s 
followers. Syria and Egypt soon fell before 
their arms, and within forty years of the 
celebrated flight of Mohammed from Mecca 
(the Hejra), the sixth of the caliphs, or suc¬ 
cessors of the Prophet, was the most power¬ 
ful sovereign of Asia. The Mongols next 
became the dominant race. In 999 Mah¬ 
mud, whose father, born a Turki slave, became 
governor of Ghazni, conquered India and es¬ 
tablished his rule. The dynasty of the Seljuk 
Tatars was established in Aleppo, Damascus, 
Iconium, and Kharism, and was distinguished 
for its struggles with the Crusaders. Othman, 
an emir of the Seljuk sultan of Iconium, 
established the Ottoman Empire in 1300. 
About 1220 Genghis Khan, an independent 
Mongol chief, made himself master of Central 
Asia, conquered Northern China, overran 
Turkestan, Afghanistan, and Persia; his suc¬ 
cessors took Bagdad and extinguished the 
caliphate. In Asia Minor they overthrew the 
Seljuk dynasty. One of them, Timur or Ta¬ 
merlane, carried fire and sword over North¬ 
ern India and Western Asia, defeated and 
took prisoner Bajazet, the descendant of Oth¬ 
man (1402), and received tribute from the 
Greek emperor. The Ottoman Empire soon 
recovered from the blow inflicted by Timur, 
and Constantinople was taken and the 
Eastern Empire finally overthrown by the 


ASIA ASMANNSH AUSEN. 


Sultan Mohammed II. in 1453. China 
recovered its independence about 1368 and 
was again subjected by the Manchu Tatars 
(1618-45), soon after which it began to 
extend its empire over Central Asia. Si¬ 
beria was conquered by the Cossacks on 
behalf of Russia (1580-84). The same 
country effected a settlement in the Cauca¬ 
sus about 1786, and has since continued to 
make steady advances into Central Asia. 
The discovery by the Portuguese of the 
passage to India by the Cape of Good 
Hope led to their establishment on the 
coast of the peninsula (1498). They were 
speedily followed by the Spanish, Dutch, 
French, and British. The struggle between 
the two last powers for the supremacy of 
India was completed by the destruction of 
the French settlements (1760-65). France 
has recently acquired an extensive territory 
in Farther India. At present the forms of 
government in Asia range from the primi¬ 
tive rule of the nomad sheik to the despotism 
of China. India has been brought by Bri¬ 
tain directly under European influence, and 
Japan is freely modelling her institutions on 
those of the West. 

Asia, Central, adesignation loosely given 
to the regions in the centre of Asia east of 
the Caspian, also called Turkestan, and for¬ 
merly Tartary. The eastern portion belongs 
to China, the western now to Russia. Rus¬ 
sian Central Asia comprises the Kirghiz 
Steppe (Uralsk, Turgai, Akmolinsk, Semi- 
palatinsk, &c.), and what is now the govern¬ 
ment-general of Turkestan, besides the terri¬ 
tory of the Turkomans, or Transcaspia and 
Merv. Russia has thus absorbed the old 
khanate of Khokand and part of Bokhara 
and Khiva, and controls the vassal terri¬ 
tories of Bokhara and Khiva, the southern 
boundary being the Persian and Afghan 
frontiers. 

Asia Minor, the most westerly portion of 
Asia, being the peninsula lying west of the 
Upper Euphrates, and forming part of Asi¬ 
atic Turkey. It forms an extensive plateau, 
with lofty mountains rising above it, the 
most extensive ranges being the Taurus and 
Anti-Taurus, which border it on the south 
and south-east, and rise to over 10,000 feet. 
There are numerous salt and fresh-water 
lakes. The chief rivers are the Kizil- 
Irmak (Halys), Sakaria (Sangarius), enter¬ 
ing the Black Sea; and the Sarabat (Her- 
mus) and Menderes (Mseander), entering 
the Aegean. The coast regions are gener¬ 
ally fertile, and have a genial climate; the 


interior is largely arid and dreary. Valu¬ 
able forests and fruit-trees abound. Smyrna 
is the chief town. Anatolia is an equivalent 
name. 

Asiatic Societies, learned bodies insti¬ 
tuted for the purpose of collecting infor¬ 
mation respecting the different countries of 
Asia, such as the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 
founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones; and 
the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain 
and Ireland, established by Mr. Colebrooke, 
and opened in 1823. There are similar socie¬ 
ties on the European Continent and in Ame¬ 
rica, such as the Soci6t6 Asiatique at Paris, 
founded in 1822; the Oriental Society of 
Germany (Deutsche Morgenlandische Ge- 
sellschaft), founded in 1845; and the Oriental 
Society at Boston, founded in 1842. 

Asiphona'ta, or Asiphon'ida, an order of 
lamellibranchiate, bivalve molluscs, desti¬ 
tute of the siphon or tube through which, 
in the Siphonata, the water that enters the 
gills is passed outwards. It includes the 
oysters, the scallop-shells, the pearl-oyster, 
the mussels, and in general the most useful 
and valuable molluscs. 

Askabad', the administrative centre of 
the Russian province of Transcaspia, situ¬ 
ated in the Akhal Tekke oasis, and occu¬ 
pied by Skobeleff in Jan. 1881, after the sack 
of Geok Tepd Its distance from Merv is 
232 miles, from Herat 388 miles. 

As'kew, Anne, a victim of religious per¬ 
secution; born 1521, martyred 1546. She 
was a daughter of Sir William Askew 
of Lincolnshire, and was married to a 
wealthy neighbour named Kyme, who, irri¬ 
tated by her Protestantism, drove her from 
his house. In London, whither she went 
probably to procure a divorce, she spoke 
against the dogmas of the old faith, and 
being tried was condemned to death as a 
heretic. Being put to the rack to extort a 
confession concerning those with whom she 
corresponded, she continued firm, and was 
then taken to Smithfield, chained to a stake, 
and burned. 

Askja (ask'ya), a volcano near the centre 
of Iceland, first brought into notice by an 
eruption in 1875. Its crater is 17 miles in 
circumference, surrounded by a mountain¬ 
ring from 500 to 1000 feet high, the height 
of the mountain itself being between 4000 
and 5000 feet. 

As'mannshausen (-hou-zn), a Prussian 
village on the Rhine, in the district of 
Wiesbaden, celebrated for its wine. Many 
judges prefer the red wine of Asmanns- 

266 



ASMODAI- 

hausen to the best Burgundy, but it retains 
its merits for three or four years only. 

Asmo'dai, or Asmo'deus, an evil spirit, 
who, as related in the book of Tobit, slew 
seven husbands of Sara, daughter of Raguel, 
but was driven away into the uttermost 
parts of Egypt by the young Tobias under 
the direction of the angel Raphael. Asmodai 
signifies a desolater, a destroying angel. He 
is represented in the Talmud as the prince 
of demons who drove King Solomon from 
his kingdom. 

Asmonse'ans, a family of high-priests and 
princes who ruled over the Jews for about 
130 years, from 153 B.C., when Jonathan, 
son of Mattathias, the great-grandson of 
Chasmon or Asmomeus, was nominated to 
the high-priesthood. 

Asnieres (an-yar), a town on the Seine, 
of from 6000 to 7000 inhabitants, a favour¬ 
ite boating resort with the Parisians. 

Aso'ka, an Indian sovereign, who reigned 
255-223 B.C. over the whole of Northern 
Hindustan, grandson of Chandragupta or 
Sandracottus. He embraced Buddhism, 
and forced his subjects also to become con¬ 
verts. Many temples and topes still re¬ 
maining are attributed to him. 

Aso'ka (Jonesia asoca), an Indian tree, 
nat. order Leguminoste, having a lovely 
flower, showing orange, scarlet, and bright 
yellow tints; sacred to the god Siva, and 
often mentioned in Indian literature. 

Aso'pus, the name of several rivers in 
Greece, of which the most celebrated is in 
Boeotia. 

Asp, Aspic ( Naja , or Vipera haje), a spe¬ 
cies of viper found in Egypt, resembling the 
cobra da capello or spectacle-serpent of the 
East Indies, and having a very venomous 
bite. When approached or disturbed it 
elevates its head and 
body, swells out its 
neck, and appears to 
stand erect to attack 
the aggressor. Hence 
the ancient Egyptians 
believed that the asps 
were guardians of the 
spots they inhabited, 
and the figure of this 
reptile was adopted as 
an emblem of the pro¬ 
tecting genius of the world. The balanc¬ 
ing motions made by it in the endeavour 
to maintain the erect attitude have led to 
the employment of the asp as a dancing 
serpent by the African jugglers. The ‘deaf 

267 


— ASPECT. 

adder that stoppeth her ear ’ of Psalm lviii. 
4, 5 is translated asp in the margin, and 
seems to have been this species. Cleopatra 
is said to have committed suicide by means 
of an asp’s bite, but the incident is generally 
associated with the Cerastes or horned viper, 
not with the haje. The name asp is also 
given to a viper (Vipera aspis) common 
on the continent of Europe. 

Aspar'agus (Asparayus officinalis), a 
plant of the order Liliaceae, the young 
shoots of which, cut as they are emerging 
from the ground, are a favourite culinary 
vegetable. In Greece, and especially in the 
southern steppes of Russia and Poland, it 
is found in profusion; and its edible quali¬ 
ties were esteemed by the ancients. It 
is mostly boiled aiid served without ad¬ 
mixture, and eaten with butter and salt. 
It is usually raised from seed; and the 
plants should remain three years in the 
ground before they are cut; after which, 
for ten or twelve years, they will con¬ 
tinue to afford a regular annual supply. 
The beds are protected by straw or litter 
in winter. Its diuretic properties are as¬ 
cribed to the presence of a crystalline sub¬ 
stance found also in the potato, lettuce, &c. 

Aspa'sia, a celebrated lady of ancient 
Greece, was born at Miletus, in Ionia, but 
passed a great part of her life at Athens, 
where her house was the general resort of 
the most distinguished men in Greece. 
She won the affection of Pericles, who 
united himself to Aspasia as closely as 
was permitted by the Athenian law, which 
declared marriage with a foreign woman 
illegal. Her power in the state has often 
been exaggerated, but it is beyond ques¬ 
tion that her genius left its mark upon the 
administration of Pericles. In 432-1 B.c. 
she was accused of impiety, and was only 
saved from condemnation by the eloquence 
and tears of Pericles. After his death 
(b.c. 429) Aspasia is said to have attached 
herself to a wealthy but obscure cattle- 
dealer of the name of Lysicles, whom she 
raised to a position of influence in Athens. 
Nothing more is known of her life. She 
had a son by Pericles, who was legitimated 
(B.c. 430) by a special decree of the people. 

As'pe, a town of southern Spain, prov. of 
Alicante. Pop. 7476. 

As'pect, in astrology, denotes the situa¬ 
tion of the planets with respect to each other. 
There are five different aspects: the sextile, 
when the planets are 60° distant; quartile, 
when they are 90° distant; trine, when 



Asp, from ancient 
Egyptian monument. 



aspen-ASPIDIUM. 


120° distant; opposition, when 180 J dis¬ 
tant; and conjunction, when both are in 
the same degree. The aspects were classed 
by astrologers as benign, malignant , or in¬ 
different. 

As'pen, or trembling poplar (Populus 
trcmula), a species of poplar indigenous to 
Britain and to most mountainous regions 
throughout Europe and Asia. It is a beauti¬ 
ful tree of rapid growth and extremely hardy, 
with nearly circular toothed leaves, smooth 
on both sides, and attached to footstalks so 
long and slender as to be shaken by the 
slightest wind; wood light, porous, soft, 
and of a white colour, useful for various 
purposes. 

Aspen, town of Gunnison co., Col., centre 
of a mining district. Population in 1890, 
5108. 

Aspergill'us, the brush used in B. Catho¬ 
lic churches for sprinkling holy water on 
the people. It is said to have been originally 
made of hyssop. 

As'pern and Esslingen (orEssLiNG) (es'- 
ling-en), two villages east of Vienna, and 
on the opposite bank of the Danube; cele¬ 
brated as the chief contested positions in 
the bloody but undecisive battle fought be¬ 
tween the Archduke Charles and Napoleon 
I., May 21 and 22, 1809, when it was esti¬ 
mated that the Austrians lost a third of 
their army, and the French no less than half. 

Asper'ula, the woodruff genus of plants. 

Asphalt, Asphal'tum, the most common 
variety of bitumen; also called mineral pitch. 
Asphalt is a compact, glossy, brittle, black 
or brown mineral, which breaks with a 
polished fracture, melts easily with a strong 
pitchy odour when heated, and when pure 
burns without leaving any ashes. It is 
found in the earth in many parts of Asia, 
Europe, and America, and in a soft or liquid 
state on the surface of the Dead Sea, which 
from this circumstance was called Asphal- 
tites. It is of organic origin, the asphalt 
of the great Pitch Lake of Trinidad being 
derived from bituminous shales, containing 
vegetable remains in the process of trans¬ 
formation. Asphalt is produced artificially 
in making coal-gas. During the process 
much tarry matter is evolved and collected 
in retorts. If this be distilled, naphtha 
and other volatile matters escape, and 
asphalt is left behind. In the U. S. in 1889 
the value of the product was $171,537. 

Asphalte (or Asphalt) Rock, a lime¬ 
stone impregnated with bitumen, found in 
large quantities in various localities in 


Europe, as in the Val de Travers, Neuf- 
chatel, Switzerland; in the department of 
Ain in France; in Alsace, Hanover, Hol¬ 
stein, Sicily, &c. These rocks contain a 
variable quantity of bitumen (from 7 or 8 
to 20 or 30 per cent) naturally diffused 
through them. The Val de Travers asphalt 
was discovered in 1710. Since then other 
asphalte-roeks, as well as artificial prepa¬ 
rations made by mixing bitumen, gas-tar, 
pitch, or other materials, with sand, chalk, 
<fcc.,have been brought into competition 
with it. From 1880 to 1890, inclusive, there 
were 6,803,054 square yards of Trinidad 
asphalt paving laid in the United States. 

As'phodel (A6'pAodg7as),agenusof plants, 
order Liliacese, consisting of perennials, 
with fasciculated fleshy roots, flowers ar¬ 
ranged in racemes, six stamens inserted at 
the base of the perianth, a sessile almost 
spherical ovary with two cells, each con¬ 
taining two ovules; fruit a capsule with 
three cells, in each of which there are, as a 
rule, two seeds. They are fine garden- 
plants, native of Southern Europe. The 
king’s spear, A. luteus, has yellow flowers, 
blossoming in June. AsphodZlus ramdsus, 
which attains a height of 5 feet, is culti¬ 
vated in Algeria and elsewhere, its tubercles 
yielding a very pure alcohol, and the residue, 
together with the stalks and leaves, being 
used in making pasteboard and paper. The 
asphodel was a favourite plant among the 
ancients, who were in the habit of planting 
it round their tombs. 

Asphyxia, literally, the state of a living 
animal in which no pulsation can be per¬ 
ceived, but the term is more particularly 
applied to a suspension of the vital functions 
from causes hindering respiration. The 
normal accompaniments of death from 
asphyxia are dark fluid blood, a congested 
brain and exceedingly congested lungs, the 
general engorgement of the viscera, and an 
absence of blood from the left cavities of 
the heart while the right cavities and pul¬ 
monary artery are gorged. The restoration 
of asphyxiated persons has been successfully 
accomplished at long periods after apparent 
death. The attempt should be made to 
maintain the heat of the body and to secure 
the inflation of the lungs as in the case of 
the apparently drowned. 

Aspic, a dish consisting of a clear savoury 
meat jelly, containing fowl, game, fish, &c. 

Aspid'ium, a genus of ferns, nat. order 
Polypodiacese, comprising the shield-fern 
and male-fern. 


268 



ASPINWALL 


ASSAM. 


As'pinwall. See Colon. 

As'pirate, a name given to any sound 
like our h, to the letter h itself, or to any 
mark of aspiration, as the Greek spiritus 
asper , or rough breathing ('). Such char¬ 
acters or sounds as the Sanskrit Jch , gh, bh, 
and the Gr. ch , th, ph, are called aspirates. 

As'pirator, an instrument used to pro¬ 
mote the flow of a gas from one vessel into 
another by means of a liquid. The simplest 
form of aspirator is a cylindrical vessel con¬ 
taining water, with a pipe at the upper end 
which communicates with the vessel con¬ 
taining the gas, and a pipe at the lower end 
also, with a stop-cock and with its extremity 
bent up. By allowing a portion of the 
water to run off by the pipe at the lower 
part of the aspirator a measured quantity 
of air or other gas is sucked into the upper 
part. 

Asple'nium, a genus of ferns, of the 
natural order Polypodiaceae. Several are 
natives of the United States. The dwarf 
spleen-wort is a very beautiful little fern. 

Aspromon'te, a mountain of Italy in the 
south-west of Calabria, where Garibaldi 
was wounded and taken prisoner with 
greater part of his army, in August, 1862. 

Aspropot'amo. See Achelous. 

As'rael, the Mohammedan angel of death, 
who takes the soul from the body. 

Ass ( Equus aslnus), a species of the horse 
genus, supposed by Darwin to have sprung 
from the wild variety (Asinus tceniupus) 
found in Abyssinia; by some writers to be 
a descendant of the onager or wild ass, in¬ 
habiting the mountainous deserts of Tartary, 
&c.; and by others to have descended from the 
kiang or djiggetai (A. hemibnus) of south¬ 
western Asia. Both in colour and size the 
ass is exceedingly variable, ranging from 
dark gray and reddish brown to white, and 
from the size of a Newfoundland dog in 
North India to that of a good-sized horse. 
In the south-western countries of Asia and in 
Egypt, in some districts of Southern Europe, 
as in Spain, and in Kentucky and Peru, 
great attention has been paid to selection 
and interbreeding, -with a result no less 
remarkable than in the case of the horse. 
Thus in Syria there appear to be four dis¬ 
tinct breeds: a light and graceful animal used 
by ladies, an Arab breed reserved for the 
saddle, an ass of heavier build in use for 
ploughing and draft purposes, and the large 
Damascus breed. The efforts made to 
raise the deteriorated British breed have 
only been partially successful. The male 

269 


ass is mature at two years of age, the 
female still earlier. The she-ass carries her 
young eleven months. The teeth of the 
young ass follow the same order of appear¬ 
ance and renewal as those of the horse. The 
life of the ass does not usually exceed thirty 
years. It is in general much healthier than 
the horse, and is maintained in this condition 
by a smaller quantity and coarser quality of 
food; it is superior to the horse in its ability 
to carry heavy burdens over the most preci¬ 
pitous roads, and is in no respect its inferior 
in intelligence, despite the reputation for 
stupidity which it has borne from very 
ancient times. The skin is used as parch¬ 
ment to cover drums, &c., and in the East 
is made into shagreen. The hybrid offspring 
of the horse and the female ass is the 
hinny, that of the ass and the mare is the 
mule; but the latter is by far the larger 
and more useful animal. Asses’ milk, long 
celebrated for its sanative qualities, more 
closely resembles that of a woman than 
any other. It is very similar in taste, and 
throws up an equally fluid cream, which is 
not convertible into butter. 

Assab', a bay in Africa, studded with 
islands, on the south-west coast of the Red 
Sea. Here is an Italian station and settle¬ 
ment declared a colony and free port by 
Italy on January 9th, 1881. 

Assafcetida. See Asafctida. 

Assai-palm (as-i; Euterpe oleracea), a 
native of tropical S. America, only about 
4 inches in diameter and 60 or 80 feet high, 
with a crown of leaves, beneath which a 
small fruit grows on branched horizontal 
spadices. The pulp of the fruit mixed with 
water is used as a beverage. 

Assal', a salt lake in north-eastern Africa, 
in Adal. 

Assam', a chief commissionership or pro¬ 
vince of British India, on the north-east 
border of Bengal, bounded on the north by 
the Himalayas, on the east and south mainly 
by Burmah; area, 49,004 square miles. It 
forms a series of fertile valleys watered by 
the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the 
valley of the Brahmaputra, which is the 
main one, consisting of rich alluvial plains, 
either but little elevated above the river, 
or so low that large extents of them are 
flooded for three or four days once or twice 
in the year, while the course of the river 
often changes. The climate is marked by 
great humidity, and malarious diseases are 
common in the low grounds; otherwise it is 
not unhealthy. The whole province, except 



ASSAPAN- 

the cultivated area, may be designated as 
forest, the trees including teak, sal, sissoo, 
the date and sago palm, the areca palm (the 
betel-nut tree), the Indian fig-tree, &c. The 
article of most commercial importance is tea, 
which was first exported in 1838, and the 



Assamese.Gossains, or Land-owners. 


yield of which is now over 60,000,000 lbs. 
annually. Other crops raised are rice, In¬ 
dian corn, pulse, oil-seeds, suga^-cane, hemp, 
jute, potatoes, &c. In the jungles and 
forests roam herds of elephants, the rhino¬ 
ceros, tiger, buffalo, leopard, bear, wild hog, 
jackal, fox, goat, and various kinds of deer. 
Among serpents are the python, and the 
cobra. Pheasants, partridges, snipe, wild 
peacock, and many kinds of water-fowl 
abound. Coal (which is begun to be worked), 
petroleum, and limestone are found in abun¬ 
dance, iron is smelted to a small extent, 
gold-dust is met with, lime is exported to 
Bengal. There is no single Assamese na- 

o o 

tionality, and the Assamese language is 
merely a modern dialect of Bengali. Pop. 
1891, 5,476,833; 2,997,072 of whom are 
Hindus, 1,483,974 Mohammedans, 16,844 
Christians; the remainder are the hill tribes 
who profess aboriginal faiths. The labourers 
in the tea-gardens are mostly drawn from 
Bengal. In 1826 Assam became a posses¬ 
sion of Britain, being taken from the Bur¬ 
mese, who had made themselves masters of 
it about the end of the eighteenth century. 
The largest town is Sylhet (pop. 14,000). 

As'sapan (Sciuropterus voluceUa), the fly¬ 
ing-squirrel of N. America, an elegant little 
animal with folds of skin along its sides 


- ASSAYE. 

which enable it to take leaps of 40 or 50 
yards. 

Assass'ins, an Asiatic order or society 
having the practice of assassination as its 
most distinctive feature, founded by Hassan 
Ben Sabbah, a dai or missionary of the 
heterodox Mohammedan sect the Ismaelites. 
The society grew rapidly in numbers, and 
in 1090 the Persian fortress of Alamut fell 
into their hands. Other territories were 
added, and the order became a recognized 
military power. Its organization comprised 
seven ranks, at its head being the Sheikh- 
al-Jebal or ‘ Old man of the mountains.’ 
Upon a select band fell the work of assassi¬ 
nation, to which they were stimulated by the 
intoxicating influence of hashish. From 
the epithet Ilashishim (hemp-eaters) which 
was applied to the order, the European word 
assassin has been derived. For nearly two 
centuries they maintained their power un¬ 
der nine sheiks. Hassan, after a long and 
prosperous reign, died in 1124. Most of his 
successors died violent deaths at the hands 
of relatives or dependents. After proving 
themselves strong enough to withstand the 
powerful sultans Noureddin and Saladin, 
and making themselves feared by the Cru¬ 
saders, the Assassins were overcome by the 
Tatar leader Hulaku. The last chief, Rok- 
neddin, was killed for an act of treachery 
subsequent to his capture, and his death 
was followed by a general massacre of the 
assassins, in which 12,000 perished. Dis¬ 
persed bands led a roving life in the Syrian 
mountains, and it is alleged that in the 
Druses and other small existing tribes their 
descendants are still to be found. 

Assault', in law, an attempt or offer, with 
foi'ce and violence, to do a corporal hurt to 
another, as by striking at him with or with¬ 
out a weapon. If a person lift up or stretch 
forth his arm and offer to strike another, or 
menace any one with any staff or weapon, 
it is an assault in law. Assault, therefore, 
does not necessarily imply a hitting or blow, 
because in trespass for assault and battery 
a man may be found guilty of the assault 
and acquitted of the battery. But every 
battery includes an assault. 

Assaye, Assye (as-si'), a village in South¬ 
ern India, in Hyderabad, where Wellington 
(then Major-general Wellesley) gained a 
famous victory in 1803. With only 4500 
troops at his disposal he completely routed 
the Mahratta force of 50,000 men and 100 
guns. The victory, however, cost him more 
than a third of his men. 

270 












ASSAYING-ASSEMBLY. 


Assaying, the estimation of the amount 
of pure metal, and especially of the precious 
metals, in an ore or alloy. In the case of 
silver the assay is either by the dry or by 
the wet process. The dry process is called 
cupellation from the use of a small and very 
porous cup, called a cupel , formed of well- 
burned and finely-ground bone-ash made 
into a paste with water. The cupel, being 
thoroughly dried, is placed in a fire-clay 
oven about the size of a drain-tile, with a 
flat sole and arched roof, and with slits at 
the sides to admit air. This oven, called a 
muffle, is set in a furnace, and when it is at 
a red heat the assay, consisting of a small 
weighed portion of the alloy wrapped in 
sheet-lead, is laid upon the cupel. The heat 
causes the lead to volatilize or combine with 
the other metals, and to sink with them into 
the cupel, leaving a bright globule of pure 
metallic silver, which gives the amount of 
silver in the alloy operated on. In the wet 
process the alloy is dissolved in nitric acid, 
and to the solution are added measured quan¬ 
tities of a solution of common salt of known 
strength, which precipitates chloride of sil¬ 
ver. The operation is concluded when no fur¬ 
ther precipitate is obtained on the addition 
of the salt solution, and the quantity of silver 
is calculated from the amount of salt solu¬ 
tion used. An alloy of gold is first cupelled 
with lead as above, with the addition of 
three parts of silver for every one of gold. 
After the cupellation is finished the alloy 
of gold and silver is beaten and rolled out 
into a thin plate, which is curled up by the 
fingers into a little spiral or cornet. This is 
put into a flask with nitric acid, which dis¬ 
solves away the silver and leaves the coi’net 
dark and brittle. After washing with water 
the cornet is boiled with stronger nitric 
acid to remove the last traces of silver, well 
washed, and then allowed to drop into a 
small crucible, in which it is heated, and 
then it is weighed. The assay of gold, 
therefore, consists of two parts: cupellation, 
by which inferior metals (except silver) are 
removed; and quartation, by which the 
added silver and any silver originally pre¬ 
sent are got rid of. The quantity of silver 
added has to be regulated to about three 
times that of the gold. If it be more the 
cornet breaks up, if it be less the gold pro¬ 
tects small quantities of the silver from the 
action of the acid. Where, as in some gold 
manufactured articles, these methods of 
assay cannot be applied, a streak is drawn 
with the article upon a touchstone consisting 

271 


of coarse-grained Lydian quartz saturated 
with bituminous matter, or of black basalt. 
The practised assayer will detect approxi¬ 
mately the richness of the gold from the 
colour of the streak, which may be further 
subjected to an acid test. The Goldsmith’s 
Company of London is the statutory assay- 
master of all England. 

As'segai, a spear used as a weapon among 
the Kaffres of S. Africa, made of hard wood 
tipped with iron, and used for throwing or 
thrusting. 

Assembly, General, the supreme eccle¬ 
siastical court of the Established Church of 
Scotland, consisting of delegates from every 
presbytery, university, and royal burgh in 
Scotland. It has the countenance of a re¬ 
presentative of the queen, styled the lord 
high commissioner, who is always a noble¬ 
man. It holds its meetings annually and 
(according to the present practice) in the 
month of May, usually sitting for ten or 
twelve days. In its judicial capacity as a 
court of review, and as the court of last 
resort, the General Assembly has a right to 
determine finally every question brought 
from the inferior courts, by reference, com¬ 
plaint, or appeal. It possesses besides a 
general superintendence of the discipline of 
the church, of the management of the in¬ 
ferior courts, of the conduct of the clergy, 
and of the morals of the people. In its 
legislative capacity it has the power of 
enacting statutes with regard to every sub¬ 
ject of ecclesiastical cognizance; which are 
binding on the Assembly itself, on the in¬ 
ferior courts, and on the individual members 
of the church. But by an act of Assembly 
in 1697, from its substance and design named 
the Barrier Act, every proposition for a new 
law must first be considered in the form of 
an overture; and though it should be ap¬ 
proved of by the Assembly it cannot be 
enacted as a statute till it has been first 
transmitted to the several presbyteries of 
the church for their consideration, and has 
received the sanction of at least a majority 
of the presbyteries. The Free Church of 
Scotland has also a General Assembly 
similar in its constitution and functions to 
that of the Established Church, and the 
same is the case with the Presbyterian 
churches of Ireland and America. 

Assembly, National (France), a body set 
up in France on the eve of the revolution. 
Upon the convocation of the States-general 
by Louis XYI. the privileged nobles and 
clergy refused to deliberate in the same 



ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES-ASSIGNATS. 


Chamber with the commons or tiers-etat 
(third estate). The latter, therefore, on the 
proposition of the Abb£ Siey&s, constituted 
themselves an assemblee nationale, with le¬ 
gislative powers (June 17, 1789). They 
bound themselves by oath not to separate 
until they had furnished France with a con¬ 
stitution, and the court was compelled to 
give its assent. In the 3250 decrees passed 
by the assembly were laid the foundations 
of a new epoch, and having accomplished 
this task it dissolved itself, Sept. 30, 1791. 

Assembly of Divines. See Westminster 
Assembly. 

As'sen, chief town of the province of 
Drenthe, Holland. Pop. 7932. 

Assent', The Royal, is the approbation 
given by the sovereign in Parliament to a 
bill which has passed both houses, after 
which it becomes a law. It may either be 
done in person, when the sovereign comes to 
the House of Peers and the assent (in Nor¬ 
man French) is declared by the clerk of 
parliament; or it may be done by letters- 
patent under the great seal, signed by the 
sovereign. 

As'ser, John, a learned British ecclesi¬ 
astic, originally a monk of St. David’s, dis¬ 
tinguished as the instructor, companion, and 
biographer of Alfred the Great, who ap¬ 
pointed him abbot of two or three different 
monasteries, and finally Bishop of Sher¬ 
borne, where he died in 908 or 910. His 
life of Alfred, written in Latin (Annales 
Rerum Gestarum /Elfredi Magni), is of 
very great value, though its authenticity 
has been questioned. There is an English 
translation in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library. 

Assess'ment, the act of determining the 
value of a man’s property or occupation for 
the purpose of levying a tax.—The sum as¬ 
sessed or levied ; a tax ; a rate. —An assess¬ 
ment of damages is the fixing of the amount 
of damages to which the prevailing party 
in a suit is entitled. 

Asses'sor, a person appointed to ascer¬ 
tain and fix the amount of taxes, rates, &c., 
and to make assessments. The “ assessors 
of taxes,” so named in the United Stales, 
are commonly termed “ surveyors ” in 
England. 

Assets (French, assez, enough), property 
o? goods available for the payment of a 
bankrupt or deceased person’s obligations. 
Assets are personal or real, the former 
comprising all goods, chattels, &c., devolving 
upon the executor as saleable to discharge 
debts and legacies. In commerce and bank¬ 


ruptcy the term is often used as the an¬ 
tithesis of ‘ liabilities,’ to designate the stock 
in trade and entire property of an individual 
or an association. 

Asside'ans, Chasioe'ans, or Chasidim, 
one of the two great sects into which, after 
the Babylonish captivity, the Jews were 
divided with regard to the observance of 
the law—the Chasidim accepting it in its 
later developments, the Zadikim professing 
adherence only to the law as given by 
Moses. From the Chasidim sprang the 
Pharisees, Talmudists, Rabbinists, Cabbal- 
ists, &c. 

Assien'to, the permission of the Spanish 
government to a foreign nation to import 
negro slaves from Africa into the Spanish 
colonies in America, for a limited time, on 
payment of certain duties. It was accorded 
to the Netherlands about 1552, to the 
Genoese in 1580, and to the French Guinea 
Company (afterwards the Assiento Com¬ 
pany) in 1702. In 1713 the celebrated 
assiento treaty with Britain for thirty years 
was concluded at Utrecht. By this contract 
the British obtained the right to send 
yearly a ship of 500 tons, with all sorts of 
merchandise, to the Spanish colonies. This 
led to frequent abuses and contraband trade; 
acts of violence followed, and in 1739 a war 
broke out between the two powers. At the 
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, four years 
more were granted to the British; but in 
the Treaty of Madrid, two years later, 
£100,000 sterling were promised for the 
relinquishment of the two remaining years, 
and the contract was annulled. 

Assignats (as-e-nya), the name of the 
national paper currency in the time of the 
French revolution. Assignats to the value 
of four hundred million francs were first 
struck off by the Constituent Assembly, 
with the approbation of the king, April 19, 
1790, to be redeemed with the proceeds of the 
sale of the confiscated goods of the church. 
August 27th of the same year, Mirabeau 
urged the issuing of 2,000,000,000 francs 
of new assignats, which caused a dispute in 
the assembly. Yergasse and Dupont, who 
saw that the plan was an invention of 
Claviere for his own enrichment, particu¬ 
larly distinguished themselves as the oppo¬ 
nents of the scheme. Mirabeau’s exertions, 
however, were seconded by Pethion, and 
800,000,000 francs more were issued. They 
were increased by degrees to 45,578,000,000, 
and their value rapidly declined. In the 
winter of 1792-93 they lost 30 per cent, 

272 



ASSIGNEE-ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 


and in spite of the law to compel their 
acceptance at their nominal value they con¬ 
tinued to fall till in the spring of 1796 they 
had sunk to one three hundred and forty- 
fourth their nominal value. This deprecia¬ 
tion was due partly to the want of confidence 
in the stability of the government, partly 
to the fact that the coarsely-executed and 
easily counterfeited assignats were forged 
in great numbers. They were withdrawn 
by the Directory from the currency, and 
at length redeemed by mandats at one- 
thirtieth of their nominal value. 

Assignee’, a person appointed by another 
to transact some business, or exercise some 
particular privilege or power. Formerly the 
persons appointed under a commission of 
bankruptcy, to manage the estate of the 
bankrupt on behalf of the creditors, were so 
called, but now trustees, or receivers. 

Assignment is a transfer by deed of any 
property, or right, title, or interest in pro¬ 
perty, real or personal. Every demand 
connected with a right of property is as¬ 
signable. 

Assiniboi'a, the smallest of the four dis¬ 
tricts into which a portion of the north¬ 
western territories of Canada was divided 
in 1882. It lies immediately to the west of 
Manitoba, with Saskatchewan and Alberta 
as its northern and western boundaries. It 
is intersected by the Saskatchewan (South 
Branch) and the Qu’Appelle Biver, and 
contains much good wheat land. Some coal 
is raised. Area, 89,535 sq. miles. Pop. 
1891, 30,374. Capital, Regina, on the 
Canadian Pacific Railway, which inter¬ 
sects the district. 

Assiniboine, a river of Canada, which 
flows through Manitoba and joins the Red 
River at Winnipeg, about 40 miles above 
the entrance of the latter into Lake Winni¬ 
peg, after a somewhat circuitous course of 
about 500 miles from the west and north¬ 
west. Steamers ply on it for over 300 miles. 

Assisi (as-se'se), a small town in Italy, 
in the province of Umbria, 20 miles north 
of Spoleto, the see of a bishop, and famous 
as the birthplace of St. Francis d’Assisi. 
The splendid church built over the chapel 
where the saint received his first impulse 
to devotion, is one of the finest remains of 
medieval Gothic architecture. 

Assi'zes, a term chiefly used in England 
to signify the sessions of the courts held at 
Westminster prior to Magna Charta, but 
thereafter appointed by successive enact¬ 
ments to be held annually in every county. 
vol. I. 273 


Twelve judges, who are members of the 
highest courts in England, twice in every 
year perform a circuit into all the counties 
into which the kingdom is divided (the 
counties being grouped into seven circuits), 
to hold these assizes, at which both civil 
and criminal cases are decided. Occasionally 
this circuit is performed a third time for 
the purpose of jail-delivery. In London 
and Middlesex, instead of circuits, courts of 
nisi prius are held. At the assizes all the 
justices of the peace of the county are bound 
to attend. Special commissions of assize 
are granted for inquest into certain causes. 

Among the more important historic uses 
of the term assize are its application to 
any sitting or deliberative council, and its 
transference thence to their ordinances, de¬ 
crees, or assessments. In the latter sense 
we have the Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of 
feudal laws formulated in 1099 under God¬ 
frey of Bouillon; the Assizes of Clarendon 
(1166),of Northampton (1176), and of Wood- 
stock (1184) ; also the assisce venalium 
(1203), for regulating the prices of articles 
of common consumption; the Assize of Arms 
(1181), an ordinance for organizing the 
national militia, &c. 

Assmanshausen. See Asmannshausen. 

Association, a society or body of per¬ 
sons joined together for the support or fur¬ 
therance of some object. Associations are 
usually divided into two classes, accord¬ 
ingly as the individuals who compose 
them have for their object the attainment 
of a spiritual end or the furtherance of a 
mere material interest. The term is used 
of mental as well as of material things. 

Association of Ideas, the term used in 
psychology to comprise theconditions under 
which one idea is able to recall another 
to consciousness. Recently some psycho¬ 
logists have been disposed to classify these 
conditions under two general heads: the 
law of contiguity, and the law of associa¬ 
tion. The first states the fact that actions, 
sensations, emotions, and ideas, which have 
occurred together, or in close succession, 
tend to suggest each other when any one of 
them is afterwards presented to the mind. 
The second indicates that present actions, 
sensations, emotions, or ideas tend to recall 
their like from among previous experiences. 
Other laws have at times been enunciated, 
but they are reducible to these; thus, the 
‘ law of contrast or contrariety ’ is properly 
a case of contiguity. On their physical side 
the principles of association correspond with 



ASSONANCE 

the physiological facts of re-excitation of 
the same nervous centres, and in this re¬ 
spect they have played an important part 
in the endeavour to place psychology upon 
a basis of positive science. The laws of 
association, taken in connection with the law 
of relativity, are held by many to be a com¬ 
plete exposition of the phenomena of in¬ 
tellect. 

Ass'onance, in poetry, a term used when 
the terminating words of lines have the 
same vowel-sound but make no proper 
rhyme. Such verses, having what we should 
consider false rhymes, are regularly em¬ 
ployed in Spanish poetry; but cases are not 
wanting in leading British poets. Mrs. 
Browning not only used them frequently, 
but justified the use of them. 

Assouan (as-so-an'), or Essouan ( Syene ), 
a town of Upper Egypt, on the east bank 
of the Nile, below the first cataract. The 
granite quarries of the Pharaohs, from 
which were procured the stones for the 
great obelisks and colossal statues of ancient 
times, are in the neighbourhood. Pop. 
about 6000; trade in dates, senna, &c. 

Assump'sit, in common law, an action to 
recover compensation for the non-perfor¬ 
mance of a 'parole promise; that is, a pro¬ 
mise not contained in a deed under seal. 
Assumpsits are of two kinds, express and 
implied. The former are where the con¬ 
tracts are actually made in word or writing; 
the latter are such as the law implies from 
the justice of the case; e.g. employment to 
do work implies a promise to pay. 

Assumption, the ecclesiastical festival 
celebrating the miraculous ascent into hea¬ 
ven of the Virgin Mary’s body as well as 
her soul, kept on the 15th of August. The 
legend first appeared in the third or fourth 
century, and the festival was instituted some 
three centuries later. 

Assumption, a city in Paraguay. See 
Asuncion. 

Assurance. See Insuravcc. 

Assyr'ia (the Asshur of the Hebrews, 
Athurd of the ancient Persians), an ancient 
monarchy in Asia, intersected by the upper 
course of the Tigris, and having the Arme¬ 
nian mountains on the north and Baby¬ 
lonia on the south; area, probably about 
100,000 sq. miles; surface partly mountain¬ 
ous, hilly, or undulating, partly a portion of 
the fertile Mesopotamian plain. The nu¬ 
merous remains of ancient habitations show 
how thickly this vast fiat must have once 
been peopled; now, for the most part, it is 


— ASSYRIA. 

a mere wilderness. The chief cities of 
Assyria in the days of its prosperity were 
Nineveh, the site of which is marked by 
mounds opposite Mosul (Nebi Yunus and 
Koyunjik), Calah or Kalakh (the modern 
Nimrud), Asshur or A1 Asur (Kalah Sher- 
ghat), Sargina (Khorsabad), and Arbela 
(Arbil). 

Much light has been thrown on the his- 
tory of Assyria by the decipherment of the 
cuneiform inscriptions obtained by excava¬ 
tion. The assertion of the Bible that the 

early inhabi¬ 
tants of Assy¬ 
ria went from 
Babylon is 
in conformity 
with the tradi¬ 
tions of later 
times, and 
with inscrip¬ 
tions on the 
disinterredAs- 
syrian monu¬ 
ments. For a 
long period 
the country 
was subject to 
governors ap¬ 
pointed by the 
kings of Baby¬ 
lon, but about 
Assyrian Soldiers. B.C. 1500 it be¬ 

came indepen¬ 
dent. About the end of the fourteenth 
century its king, Shalmaneser, is said to 
have founded the city of Kalakh or Calah; 
his son Tiglath-ninip conquered the whole 
of the valley of the Euphrates. The five 
following reigns were chiefly occupied by 
wars with the Babylonians. About 1120 
Tiglath-Pileser I., one of the greatest of 
the sovereigns of the first Assyrian monar¬ 
chy, ascended the throne, and carried his 
conquests to the Mediterranean on the one 
side and to the Caspian and the Persian 
Gulf on the other. At his death there 
ensued a period of decline, which lasted 
over 200 years. Under Assur-nazir-pal, 
who reigned from 884 to 859 B.C., Assyria 
once more advanced to the position of the 
leading power in the world, the extent 
of his kingdom being greater than that of 
Tiglath-Pileser. The magnificent palaces, 
temples, and other buildings of his reign 
prove the advance of the nation in wealth, 
art, and luxury. In 859 he was succeeded 
by his son Shalmaneser II., whose career 

274 









































ASSYRIA. 


of conquest was equally successful. He 
reduced Babylon to a state of vassalage, 
and came into hostile contact with Ben- 
hadad and Hazael of Damascus, and with 
Ahab and Jehu of Israel, from whom he 
exacted tribute, as also from the kings of 
Tyre and Sidon. The old dynasty came to 
an end in the person of Assurnirari II., who 
was driven from the throne by a usurper, 
Tiglath-Pileser, in 745, after a struggle of 
some years. No sooner was this able ruler 
firmly seated on the throne than he made 
an expedition into Babylonia, followed by 


another to the east in 744. A year later he 
defeated the confederate princes of Armenia, 
Syria, &c., and advancing against Syria, 
overthrew the ancient kingdoms of Damas¬ 
cus and Hamath, and placed his vassal 
Hosea on the throne of Samaria. A pro¬ 
tracted campaign in Media (737-735), an¬ 
other in Armenia, and the expedition into 
Syria mentioned in 2 Kings xvi., are among 
the most important events of the latter 
years of his reign. Tiglath-Pileser carried 
the Assyrian arms from Lake Van on the 
north to the Persian Gulf on the south, and 



Hunting Wild Bull, from Monuments at Nineveh. 


from the confines of India on the east to 
the Nile on the west. He was, however, 
driven from his throne by Shalmaneser IV. 
(727), who blockaded Tyre for five years, 
invaded Israel, and besieged Samaria, but 
died before the city was reduced. His suc¬ 
cessor Sargon (722-705), a usurper, claimed 
descent from the ancient Assyrian kings. 
After taking Samariaand leading over 27,000 
people captive, he overthrew the combined 
forces of Elam (Susiana) and Babylon. He 
defeated the King of Hamath, who along 
with other princes had revolted, took him 
prisoner, and flayed him alive, advanced 
through Philistia and captured Ashdod; 
then pushing southwards totally defeated 
the forces of Egypt and Gaza at Raphia 
(719). The revolted Armenians had also 
more than once to be put down. In 710 
Merodach-Baladan was driven out of Baby¬ 
lonia by Sargon, after holding it for twelve 
years as an independent king, and being 
supported by the rulers of Egypt and Pal¬ 
estine; his allies were also crushed, Judah 
was overrun, and Ashdod levelled to the 
ground. Sargon latterly crossed over and 

275 


took Cyprus, where he left an inscription 
telling of his expedition. He spent the lat¬ 
ter years of his reign in internal reforms, 
in the midst of which he was murdered, 
being succeeded by Sennacherib, one of his 
younger sons, in 705. Sennacherib at once 
had to take up arms against Merodach-Ba¬ 
ladan, who had again obtained possession of 
Babylon. In 701 fresh outbreaks in Syria 
led him in that direction. He captured 
Zidon and Askelon, and defeated Hezekiah 
and his Egyptian and Ethiopian allies, and 
forced him to pay tribute, after which he 
returned to Assyria to overawe the Babylo¬ 
nians, Elamites, and the northern hill tribes. 
A second expedition into Syria is briefly re¬ 
corded in 2 Kings xix., where we are told 
that, as his army lay before Libnah, in one 
night the angel of Jehovah went out, and 
smote in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000 
men (2 Kings xix. 35). In 681 he was 
murdered by his two sons, Adrammelech and 
Sharezer, but they were defeated by their 
brother Esar-haddon, who then mounted the 
throne. Esar-haddon fixed his residence 
at Babylon, and made it his capital. The 













ASSYRIA. 


most important event of this reign was the 
conquest of Egypt, which was reduced to 
a state of vassalage, the Ethiopian ruler 
Tirhakah being driven out and the land 
divided into twenty separate kingdoms, the 
rulers of which were the vassals of Esar- 
haddon. He associated his son Assur-bani- 
pal with him in the government of the 
kingdom (669), and two years later this 
prince (the Sardanapalus of the Greeks) 
became sole ruler. In 652 a general insur¬ 
rection broke out, headed by Sammughes, 
governor of Babylonia, Assur-bani-pals 
own brother, and including Babylonia, 
Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia. Egypt was 
the only power, however, which regained 
its independence; fire, sword, and famine 
reduced the rest to submission. In 640 the 
Medes revolted, and latterly made them¬ 
selves independent. Though the king's 
character was marked by cruelty and sensu¬ 
ality, he was a zealous patron of the arts 
and learning. He died in 625, and was 
succeeded by his son Assur-emid-ilin (or 
Sarakos), under whom Babylon definitely 
threw off the Assyrian yoke. The coun¬ 
try continued rapidly to decline, fighting 
hard for existence until the capital Nine¬ 
veh was captured and burned by the allied 
forces of the Medes and Babylonians, about 
607 or 606 b.c. The story of Sardanapalus 
associated with this event is a mere myth 
or legend. Assyria now fell partly to Me¬ 
dia, partly to Babylonia, and afterwards 
formed with Babylonia one of the satrapies 
of the Persian empire. In 312 B.c. it be¬ 
came part of the kingdom of the Seleucidae; 
lat.r on it came under Parthian rule, and 
was more than once a Roman possession. 
For a long | ieriod it was under the caliphs 
of Bagdad. In 1638 the Turks wrested it 
from the Persians, and it has continued 
under their dominion since that date. 

The original inhabitants of Assyria and 
Babylonia are known as Accadians (or Su¬ 
merians). They belonged to the Turanian or 
Ural-Altaic race, and were, therefore, of the 
same stock as that from which the Finns, 
Turks, and Magyars have descended. In 
early times a Semitic race of people spread 
themselves over the country, and mingled 
with or supplanted the original inhabitants, 
while their language took the place of the 
Accadian, the latter becoming a dead lan¬ 
guage. These later Assyrians were thus 
akin to the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and mod¬ 
ern Arabians. Their language differed little 
from the Babylonian, and both retained 


traces of the influence of the earlier Acca¬ 
dian. Assyrian is closely allied to Hebrew 
and Phoenician, and changed little through¬ 
out the 1500 years during which we can 
trace it in the inscriptions. It continued 
to be written with the cuneiform or arrow- 
headed character down to the third century 
B.c. The greater part of the Assyrian litera¬ 
ture was stamped in minute characters on 
baked bricks, the subjects comprising hymns 
to the gods, mythological and epic poems, 
and works on history, chronology, astrology, 
law, &c. The Assyrian religion was almost 
the same as that of Babylonia, but in addi¬ 
tion to the worship of the Babylonian dei¬ 
ties the Assyrians adored their national deity 
Assur, who was called king of all the gods, 
the god who created himself. He was sym¬ 
bolically represented by a winged circle in¬ 
closing the figure of an archer. After Assur 
came twelve chief deities, including Anu, the 
father of the gods; Bel, the lord of the 
world; Hea, the lord of the sea; Sin, the 
moon-god; Shamas, the sun-god; Istar, a 
powerful goddess with various attributes; 
Ninip, god of hunting (the man-bull); Ner- 
gal, god of war (the man-lion); &c. A 
number of spirits, good and evil, presided 
over the minor operations of nature. There 
were set forms regulating the worship of all 
the gods and spirits, and prayers to each 
were inscribed on clay tablets with blanks 
for the names of the persons using them. 

The Assyrians were far advanced in art 
and industry, and in civilization in general. 
They constructed large buildings, especially 
palaces, of a most imposing character, the 
materials being brick, burned or sun-dried, 
stone, alabaster slabs for lining and adorn¬ 
ing the walls internally and externally, and 
timber for pillars and roofs. These alabaster 
slabs were elaborately sculptured with de¬ 
signs serving to throw much light on the 
manners and customs of the people. A most 
characteristic feature of the palaces were 
gigantic figures of winged, human-headed 
bulls, placed at gateways (often arched over) 
or other important points ; figures of lions, 
&c., were also similarly employed. The 
palaces were raised on high terraces, and 
often comprised a great number of apart¬ 
ments; there were no windows, light being 
obtained by carrying the walls up to a cer¬ 
tain height and then raising on them pillars 
to support the roof and admit light and 
air. The Assyrian sculptures, as a rule, 
were in relief, figures in the full round being 
the exception. In many cases, however, 

276 


ASSYRIA-AST. 


as in those of winged bulls and other mon¬ 
sters, a compromise was attempted between 
the full round and relief, the heads being 
worked free and the body in relief, with an 
additional leg to meet the exigencies of 
different points of view. More than three- 
quarters of the reliefs are of warlike scenes; 
hunting scenes are also favourite subjects; 
occasionally industrial scenes in connection 
with palace building are represented, and 
less frequently religious ceremonials. The 
artists had no conception of perspective. 
In some of the hunting scenes an exceed¬ 
ingly high level of art is attained. The 
vestiges of Assyrian painting consist chiefly 
of fragments of stucco and glazed tiles, on 
which are bands of ornament, rows of ro¬ 
settes and anthemions, woven strap-work, 
conventionalized mythic animals, and occa¬ 
sionally figures. In these traces of Egyp¬ 
tian influence are to be found, but the As¬ 
syrian figure type is for the most part of a 
more voluptuous and vigorous fulness than 
the Egyptian. Of the advanced condition 
of the Assyrians in various other respects 
we have ample evidence. They understood 
and applied the arch; constructed tunnels, 
aqueducts, and drains; used the pulley, the 
lever, and the roller; engraved gems in a 
highly artistic way; understood the arts of 
inlaying, enamelling, and overlaying with 
metals; manufactured porcelain, transparent 
and coloured glass, and were acquainted 
with the lens; and possessed vases, jars, and 
other dishes, bronze and ivory ornaments, 
bells, gold ear-rings and bracelets of excel¬ 
lent design and workmanship. Their house¬ 
hold furniture also gives a high idea of their 
skill and taste. The cities of Nineveh, 
Assur, and Arbela had each their royal 
observatories, superintended by astronomers- 
royal, who had to send in their reports to 
the king twice a month. At an early date 
the stars were numbered and named; a 
calendar was formed, in which the year was 
divided into twelve months (of thirty days 
each), called after the zodiacal signs, but as 
this division was found to be inaccurate an 
intercalary month was added every six 
years. The week was divided into seven 
days, the seventh being a day of rest; the day 
was divided into twelve periods of two hours 
each, each of these being subdivided into 
sixty minutes, and these again into sixty 
seconds. The Assyrians employed both the 
dial and the clepsydra. Eclipses were re¬ 
corded from a very remote epoch, and their 

Roughly detemuugd, The prift-. 


cipal astronomical work, called the Illumi¬ 
nation of Bel, was inscribed on seventy tab¬ 
lets, and went through numerous editions, 
one of the latest being in the British Mu¬ 
seum. It treats among other things of 
comets, the polar star, the conjunction of 
the sun and moon, and the motions of Venus 
and Mars. 

A ssyriology, the department of knowledge 
which deals with Assyrian antiquities and 
history, is entirely a modern study. Until 
1842 the materials for Assyrian history were 
derived from the Jewish records of the Old 



Testament and from such comparatively 
late writers as Herodotus and Ctesias. In 
1843-46 M. Botta, the French consul at 
Mosul, made the first explorations at Ko- 
yunjik and Khorsabad, and the objects thus 
obtained were transported to the Louvre. 
In 1845 and in 1849 valuable researches 
were conducted by Mr. Layard, and subse¬ 
quently continued by the Bi'itish Museum 
trustees. Later researches were instituted 
by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, 
and then by government, in which Mr. 
George Smith met with considerable suc¬ 
cess. More recently Mr. Rassam has car¬ 
ried on the work of discovery. In the 
decipherment and translation of the cunei¬ 
form inscriptions among the most distin¬ 
guished names are those of Sir Henry Raw- 
linson, Mr. H. Fox Talbot, Mr. George 
Smith, M. Jules Oppert, Dr. Schrader, Dr. 
Hincks, Rev. A. H. Sayee, Mr. Le Page 
Renouf, Prof. Terrien de la Couperie, Mr. 
Boscawen, and Mr. Pinches. 

Ast, Georg Anton Friedrich, German 
scholar and philosopher, born 1776, died 
1841, He wrote on aesthetics and the his¬ 
tory of philosophy, but is best known as 


































ASTACUS 




ASTI. 


editor of Plato, whose works he published 
with a Latin translation and commen¬ 
tary. 

As'tacus. See Crayfish. 

Astar'te, a Syrian goddess, probably 
corresponding to the Semele of the Greeks 
and the Ashtaroth of the Hebrews, and 
representing the productive power of nature. 
She was a moon-goddess. Some regard her 
as corresponding with Ilera (Juno ), and 
others with Aphrodite. See Ashtaroth. 

Astatic needle, a magnetic needle having 
another needle of the same intensity fixed 
parallel to it, the poles being reversed, so 
that the needles neutralize one another, and 
are unaffected by the earth’s magnetism: 
used in the astatic galvanometer. 

As'ter, a genus of plants, nat. order 
Composite, comprehending several hundred 
species, mostly natives of North America, 
although others are widely distributed. 
Many are cultivated as ornamental plants. 
One, A. Tripolium , is native in Britain, 
and is found in salt marshes, having a 
pretty purple flower. Asters generally 
flower late in the season, and some are 
hence called Michaelmas or Christmas 
Daisies. The China Aster ( Aster or Calliste- 
phus sinensis) is a very showy annual, of 
which there are many varieties. 

Asterabad'. See Astrabad. 

Aste'ria, a name applied to a variety of 
corundum, which displays an opalescent star 
of six rays of light when cut with certain 
precautions; and also to the cat’s-eye, which 
consists of quartz, and is found especially 
in Ceylon. 

Aster'idae. See Asteroidea. 

Asterisk, the figure of a star, thus *, 
used in printing and writing, as a reference 
to a passage or note in the margin, or to fill 
the space when a name, or the like, is 
omitted. 

Asteroi'dea, the order of the Echinoder- 
mata to which the star-fishes belong. See 
Star-fishes. 

As'teroids, or Planetoids, a numerous 
group of very small planets revolving round 
the sun between the orbits of Mars and 
Jupiter, remarkable for the eccentricity of 
their orbits and the large size of their angle 
of inclination to the ecliptic. The diameter 
of the largest is not supposed to exceed 450 
miles, while most of the others are very 
much smaller. They number over 270, 
and new members are being constantly 
discovered. Ceres, the first of them, was 
discovered 1st January, 1801, and within 


three years more Pallas, Juno, and Vesta 
were seen. The extraordinary smallness of 
these bodies, and their nearness to each other, 
gave rise to the opinion that they were but 
the fragments of a planet that had formerly 
existed and had been brought to an end by 
some catastrophe. For nearly forty years 
investigations were carried on, but no 
more planets were discovered till 8th De¬ 
cember, 1845, when a fifth planet in the 
same region was discovered. The rapid 
succession of discoveries that followed was 
for a time taken as a corroboration of the 
disruptive theory, but the breadth of the 
zone occupied makes the hypothesis of a 
shattered planet more than doubtful. Their 
mean distances from the sun vary between 
200,000,000 and 300,000,000 miles; the 
periods of revolution between 1191 days 
(Flora) and 2868 (Hilda). Their eccen¬ 
tricities and inclinations are on the average 
greater than those of the earth, but their 
total mass does not exceed one-fourth that 
of the earth. 

Asterolepis, a genus of gigantic ganoid 
fishes, now found only in a fossil state in 
the Old Red Sandstone. From the remains 
it would seem that these fishes must have 
sometimes attained the length of 18 or 20 
feet. 

Asthma (ast'ma), difficulty of respiration, 
returning at intervals, with a sense of stric¬ 
ture across the chest and in the lungs, a 
wheezing, hard cough at first, but more free 
towards the close of each paroxysm, with 
a discharge of mucus, followed by a remis¬ 
sion. Asthma is essentially a spasm of the 
muscular tissue which is contained in the 
smaller bronchial tubes. It generally at¬ 
tacks persons advanced in years, and seems, 
in some instances, to be hereditary. The 
exciting causes are various—accumulation 
of blood or viscid mucus in the lungs, 
noxious vapours, a cold and foggy atmos¬ 
phere, or a close, hot air, flatulence, accumu¬ 
lated faeces, violent passions, organic dis¬ 
eases in the thoracic viscera, &c. By far the 
most important part of the treatment con¬ 
sists in the obviating or removing the several 
exciting causes. It seldom proves fatal 
except as inducing dropsy, consumption, 
&c. 

Asti (as'te), a town of Northern Italy, 
province of Alessandria, 28 miles e.s.e. of 
Turin, the see of a bishop, with an old 
cathedral. In the middle ages it was one 
of the most powerful republics of Northern 
Italy. It was the birthplace of Alfieri, the 



ASTIGMATISM 


ASTRAKHAN. 


poet, whose statue adorns the principal 
square. A favourite wine is produced in 
the neighbourhood. Pop. 17,310. 

Astig'matism, a malformation, congenital 
or accidental, of the lens of the eye, in con- 



Cathedral Church of St. Magdalen, Asti. 


sequence of which the individual does not 
see objects in the same plane, although they 
may really be so. It is due to the degree 
of convexity of the horizontal and vertical 
meridians being different, so that corres¬ 
ponding rays, instead of converging into one 
point, meet at two foci. 

Astle, Thomas, English antiquary, born 
1734, died 1803. He was a trustee of the 
British Museum and keeper of the public 
records in the Tower. His chief work, 
The Origin and Progress of Writing, ap¬ 
peared in 1784. 

Astom'ata, one of the two groups into 
which the Protozoa are divided with regard 
to the presence or absence of a mouth, of 
which organ the Astomata are destitute. 
The group comprises two classes, Gregar- 
inida and Rhizopoda. See Stomatoda. 

Aston Manor, a local board district, and 
since 1885 a pari. bor. of England, situated 
about 1^ mile E.N.E. from Birmingham. 
Pop. 1891, 6a,639. 

Astor, John Jacob, born near Heidel¬ 
berg, Germany, 1763; died at New York, 

279 


1848. In 1783 he emigrated to the United 
States, settled at New STork, and became 
extensively engaged in the fur trade. In 
1811 the settlement of Astoria, founded by 
him, near the mouth of the Columbia river, 
was formed to serve as a central depot for the 
fur trade between the lakes and the Pacific. 
He subsequently engaged in various specu¬ 
lations, and died worth $20,000,000, leaving 
$400,000 to found the Astor Library in 
New York. This institution is contained 
in a splendid building, enlarged in 1859 at 
the cost of his son, and comprises about 
260,000 volumes. 

Astor'ga, a city of Spain, prov. of Leon; 
the Asturica Augusta of the Romans. It 
figured prominently during the Peninsular 
war; was taken by the French after an ob¬ 
stinate defence, 1810; and retaken by the 
Spaniards, 1812. Pop. 5000. 

Asto ria, a town of Oregon, U. States, 
on the Columbia river, with numerous 
salmon-canning establishments. Pop. 6184. 
See Astor. 

Astrabad', a town of Persia, capital of a 
province of the same name on the Caspian. 
It was formerly the residence of the Kajar 
princes, the ancestors of the present Persian 
dynasty. It is very unhealthy, and has 
been called the City of the Plague. Pop. 
estimated at from 4000 to 18,000. 

Astrse'a, in Greek mythology, the daugh¬ 
ter of Zeus and Themis, and goddess of jus¬ 
tice. During the golden age she dwelt on 
earth, but on that age passing away she 
withdrew from the society of men and was 
placed among the stars, where she forms the 
constellation Virgo. The name was given 
to one of the asteroids, discovered in 1845. 
It revolves round the sun in 1511T0 solar 
days, and is about 21, times the distance of 
the earth from the sun. 

As'tragal, in architecture, a small semi¬ 
circular moulding, with a fillet beneath it, 
which surrounds a column in the form of a 
ring, separating the shaft from the capital. 

Astrag'alus, the upper bone of the foot 
supporting the tibia; the huckle, ankle, 
or sling bone. It is a strong irregularly- 
shaped bone, and is connected with the 
others by powerful ligaments. 

Astrag'alus, a genus of papilionaceous 
plants, herbaceous or shrubby, and often 
spiny. A. gummifer yields gum tragacanth. 

Astrakhan (as-tra-Aan'), a Russian city, 
capital of government of same name, on an 
elevated island in the Volga, about 30 miles 
above its mouth in the Caspian, communi- 




























































ASTRAKHAN-ASTRONOMY. 


eating with the opposite banks of the river 
by numerous bridges. It is the seat of a 
Greek archbishop and has a large cathedral, 
as well as places of worship for Mohamme¬ 
dans, Armenians, &c. The manufactures 
are large and increasing, and the fisheries 
(sturgeon, &c.) very important. It is the 
chief port of the Caspian, and has regular 
steam communication with the principal 
towns on its shores. Pop. 57,704, composed 
of various races.—The government has an 
area of 85,000 square miles. It consists 
almost entirely of two vast steppes, sepa¬ 
rated from each other by the Volga, and 
forming for the most part arid sterile de¬ 
serts. Pop. 766,840. 

Astrakhan, a name given to sheep-skins 
with a curled woolly surface obtained from 
a variety of sheep found in Bokhara, Persia, 
and Syria; also a rough fabric with a pile 
in imitation of this. 

Astral Spirits, spirits formerly believed 
to people the heavenly bodies or the aerial 
regions. In the middle ages they were 
variously conceived as fallen angels, souls 
of departed men, or spirits originating in 
fire, and belonging neither to heaven, earth, 
nor hell. Paracelsus regarded them as de¬ 
moniacal in character. 

Astrin'gent, a medicine which contracts 
the organic textures and canals of the body, 
thereby checking or diminishing excessive 
discharges. The chief astringents are the 
mineral acids, alum, lime-water, chalk, salts 
of copper, zinc, iron, lead, silver; and among 
vegetables catechu, kino, oalc-bark, and galls. 

Astroca'ryum, a genus of tropical Ameri¬ 
can palms, species of which yield oil and 
valuable fibre. Tucum oil and tucum thread 
are obtained from A. vulgare. 

As'trolabe, an instrument formerly used 
for taking the altitude of the sun or stars,, 
now superseded by the quadrant and sex¬ 
tant. The name was also formerly given to 
an armillary sphere. 

Astrol'ogy, literally, the science or doc¬ 
trine of the stars. The name was formerly 
used as equivalent to astronomy, but is now 
restricted in meaning to the pseudo-science 
which pretends to enable men to judge of 
the effects and influences of the heavenly 
bodies on human and other mundane affairs, 
and to foretell future events by their situa¬ 
tions and conjunctions. As usually practised 
the whole heavens, visible and invisible, was 
divided by great circles into twelve equal 
parts, called houses. As the circles were 
supposed to remain immovable every heaven¬ 


ly body passed through each of the twelve 
houses every twenty-four hours. The por¬ 
tion of the zodiac contained in each house 
was the part to which chief attention was 
paid, and the position of any planet was 
settled by its distance from the boundary 
circle of the house, measured on the ecliptic. 
The houses had different names and differ¬ 
ent powers, the first being called the house 
of life, the second the house of riches, the 
third of brethren, the sixth of marriage, the 
eighth of death, and so on. The part of 
the heavens about to rise was called the 
ascendant, the planet within the house of 
the ascendant being lord of the ascendant. 
The different aspects of the planets were of 
great importance. To cast a person's na¬ 
tivity (or draw his horoscope) was to find the 
position of the heavens at the instant of his 
birth, which being done the astrologer, who 
knew the various powers and influences pos¬ 
sessed by the sun, the moon, and the planets, 
could predict what the course and termina¬ 
tion of that person’s life would be. The 
temperament of the individual was ascribed 
to the planet under which he was born, as 
saturnine from Saturn, jovial from Jupiter, 
mercurial from Mercury, &c., words which 
are now used with little thought of their 
original meaning. The virtues of herbs, 
gems, and medicines were supposed to be 
due to their ruling planets. 

Astron'omy (from Gr. astron, a heavenly 
body, and nomos, law) is that science which 
investigates the motions, distances, magni¬ 
tudes, and various phenomena of the hea¬ 
venly bodies. That part of the science 
which gives a description of the motions, 
figures, periods of revolution, and other 
phenomena of the heavenly bodies is called 
descriptive astronomy; that part which 
teaches how to observe the motions, figures, 
periodical revolutions, distances, &c., of the 
heavenly bodies, and how to use the neces¬ 
sary instruments, is called practical astro¬ 
nomy; and that part which explains the 
causes of their motions, and demonstrates 
the laws by which those causes operate, is 
termed physical astronomy. Recent years 
have added two new fields of investigation 
which are full of promise for the advance¬ 
ment of astronomical science. The first of 
these—celestial photography —has furnished 
us with invaluable light-pictures of the sun, 
moon, and other bodies, and has recorded 
the existence of myriads of stars invisible 
even by the best telescopes; while the second, 
spectrum, analysis, now at work in many 



ASTRONOMY. 


hands, reveals to us a knowledge of the phy¬ 
sical constituents of the universe, telling us 
for instance that in the sun (or his atmo¬ 
sphere) there exist many of the elements 
familiar to us on the earth. It has also 
been applied to the determination of the 
velocity with which stars are approaching 
to, or receding from, our system; and to the 
measurement of movements taking place 
within the solar atmospheric envelopes. 
From analysis of some of the unresolved 
nebulae the inference is drawn that they 
are not star-swarms but simply cosmical 
vapour; whence a second inference results 
favourable to the hypothesis of the gradual 
condensation of nebulae, and the successive 
evolutions of suns and systems. 

The most remote period to which we can 
go back in tracing the history of astronomy 
refers us to a time about 2500 B.C., when 
the Chinese are said to have recorded the 
simultaneous conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, 
Mars, and Mercury with the moon. This 
remarkable phenomenon is found, by calcu¬ 
lating backward, to have taken place 2460 
B.c. Astronomy has also an undoubtedly 
high antiquity in India. The mean annual 
motion of Jupiter and Saturn was observed 
so early as 3062 years B.c.; tables of the 
sun, moon, and planets were formed, and 
eclipses calculated. In the time of Alex¬ 
ander the Great, the Chaldeans or Babylo¬ 
nians had carried on astronomical observa¬ 
tions for 1900 years. They regarded comets 
as bodies travelling in extended orbits, and 
predicted their return; and there is reason to 
believe that they were acquainted with the 
true system of the universe. The priests of 
Egypt gave astronomy a religious character; 
but their knowledge of the science is testi¬ 
fied to only by their ancient zodiacs and 
the position of their pyramids with relation 
to the cardinal points. It was among the 
Greeks that astronomy took a more scien¬ 
tific form. Thales of Miletus (born 639 B.c.) 
predicted a solar eclipse, and his successors 
held opinions which are in many respects 
wonderfully in accordance with modern 
ideas. Pythagoras (500 B.c.) promulgated 
the theory that the sun is the centre of the 
planetary system. Great progress was made 
in astronomy under the Ptolemies, and we 
find Timochares and Aristyllus employed 
about 300 B.C. in making useful planetary 
observations. But Aristarchus of Samos 
(born 267 B.C.) is said, on the authority of 
Archimedes, to have far surpassed them, 
\>y teaching the double motion of the earth 


around its axis and around the sun. A 
hundred years later Hipparchus determined 
more exactly the length of the solar year, the 
eccentricity of the ecliptic, the precession of 
the equinoxes, and even undertook a catalogue 
of the stars. It was in the second century 
after Christ that Claudius Ptolemy, a fa¬ 
mous mathematician of Pelusium in Egypt, 
propounded the system that bears his name, 
viz.: that the earth was the centre of the 
universe, and that the sun, moon, and pla¬ 
nets revolved around it in the following 
order: nearest to the earth was the sphere 
of the moon; then followed the spheres of 
Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, 
and Saturn; then came the sphere of the 
fixed stars; these were succeeded by two 
crystalline spheres and an outer sphere 
named the primum mobile or first motion, 
which last was again circumscribed by the 
coelum empyreum, of a cubic shape, wherein 
happy souls found their abode. The Arabs 
began to make scientific astronomical obser¬ 
vations about the middle of the eighth cen¬ 
tury, and for 400 years they prosecuted the 
science with assiduity. Ibn-Yunis (1000 
a.d.) made important observations of the 
disturbances and eccentricities of Jupiter 
and Saturn. In the sixteenth century Ni¬ 
cholas Copernicus, born in 1473, introduced 
the system that bears his name, and which 
gives to the sun the central place in the 
solar system, and shows all the other bodies, 
the earth included, revolving around him. 
This arrangement of the universe (see Co- 
pernicus) came at length to be generally 
received on account of the simplicity it sub¬ 
stituted for the complexities and contra¬ 
dictions of the theory of Ptolemy. The 
observations and calculations of Tycho 
Brahe, a Danish astronomer, born in 1546, 
continued over many years, were of the 
highest value, and claim for him the title 
of regenerator of practical astronomy. His 
assistant and pupil, Kepler, born in 1571, 
was enabled, principally by the aid he re¬ 
ceived from his master’s labours, to arrive 
at those laws which have made his name 
famous: 1. That the planets move, not in 
circular, but in elliptical orbits, of which 
the sun occupies a focus. 2. That the radius 
vector, or imaginary straight line joining the 
sun and any planet, moves over equal spaces 
in equal times. 3. That the squares of the 
times of the revolutions of the planets are 
as the cubes of their mean distances from 
the sun. Galileo, who died in 1642, ad¬ 
vanced the science by his observations an4 



ASTRONOMY 


ASUNCION. 


by the new revelations he made through 
his telescopes, which established the truth 
of the Copernican theory. Newton, born 
iw^ 1642, carried physical astronomy sud¬ 
denly to comparative perfection. Accept¬ 
ing Kepler’s laws as a statement of the 
facts of planetary motion he deduced from 
them his theory of gravitation. The sci¬ 
ence was enriched towards the close of the 
eighteenth century by the discovery by 
Herschel of the planet Uranus and its satel¬ 
lites, the resolution of the Milky Way into 
myriads of stars, and the unravelling of the 
mystery of nebulae and of double and triple 
stars. The splended analytical researches 
of Lalande, Lagrange, Delambre, and La¬ 
place, mark the same period. The nine¬ 
teenth century opened with the discovery 
of the first four minor planets; and the 
existence of another planet (Neptune) more 
distant from the sun than Uranus, was, in 
1845, simultaneously and independently 
predicted by Leverrier and Adams. Of 
late years the sun has attracted a number 
of observers, the spectroscope and photo¬ 
graphy having been especially fruitful in 
this field of investigation. From recent 
transit observations the former calculated 
distance of the sun has been corrected, and 
is now given as 92,560,000 miles. An in¬ 
teresting recent discovery is that of the two 
satellites of Mars. The existence of an 
intra-Mercurial planet, which has been 
named Vulcan, has not yet been verified. 
Much valuable work has of late been ac¬ 
complished in ascertaining the parallax of 
fixed stars. 

The objects with which astronomy has 
chiefly to deal are the earth, the sun, the 
moon, the planets, the fixed stars, comets, 
nebulse, and meteors. The stellar universe 
is composed of an unknown host of stars, 
many millions in number, the most notice¬ 
able of wliich have been formed into groups 
called constellations. The nebulae are cloud¬ 
like patches of light scattered all over the 
heavens. Some of them have been resolved 
into star-clusters, but many of them are but 
masses of incandescent gas. A favourite 
theory regarding the fixed stars is that they 
form a system to which our sun belongs, and 
that many of the nebulae are similar systems 
situated far outside of our own. The fixed 
stars preserve, at least to unaided vision, an 
unalterable relation to each other, because 
of their vast distance from the earth. Their 
apparent movement from east to west is 
the result of the earth’s revolution on its 

- • » • ■ W * V* V ' . V vi. . w 


axis in twenty-four hours from west to east. 
The planets have not only an apparent, but 
also a real and proper motion, since, like 
our earth, they revolve around the sun in 
their several orbits and periods. The 
nearest of these bodies to the sun—unless 
the hypothetical Vulcan really exists—is 
Mercury. Venus, the second planet from 
the sun, is the brightest and most beau¬ 
tiful of all the planets. The Earth is 
the first planet accompanied by a satellite 
or moon. Mars, the next planet, has two 
satellites, as already mentioned. Its sur¬ 
face has a variegated character, and the 
existence of land, w’ater, snow, and ice has 
been assumed. The Asteroids , of which 
over 270 have been observed, form a broad 
zone of small bodies circulating in the space 
between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter , the 
largest planet of the system, has four satel¬ 
lites, discovered by Galileo, and is marked 
by dark bands or belts on each side of the 
equator. Saturn, with his eight moons, and 
his broad thin rings with edges turned to¬ 
wards the planet, is, perhaps, the most strik¬ 
ing telescopic object in the heavens. Uranus 
—discovered by Herschel in 1781—is ac¬ 
companied by four satellites. Neptune , the 
farthest removed from the sun, has one 
satellite, the motion of which is retrograde. 
Besides the planets, quite a number of 
comets are known to be members of the 
solar system. The physical constitution 
of these bodies is still one of the enigmas of 
astronomy. The observation of meteors 
has recently attracted much attention. They 
most frequently occur in the autumn, and 
have been supposed to be the debris of 
comets. See articles Earth, Sun, Moon , 
Planet, Comet, Stars, Mercury, Venus, Mars, 
Jupiter, Saturn, Asteroids, &c. 

Astur. See Goshawk. 

Astu'ria, or The Asturias, a Spanish 
pi’incipality, now forming the province of 
Oviedo, on the north coast of Spain; an 
alpine region, with steep and jagged moun¬ 
tain ridges, valuable minerals, luxuriant 
grazing lands, and fertile well-watered 
valleys. The hereditary prince of Spain 
has borne since 1388 the title of Prince of 
the Asturias. 

Asty'ages (-jez), last king of the Medes, 
593-558 b.c., deposed by Cyrus, an event 
which transferred the supremacy from the” 
Medes to the Persians. 

Asuncion (a-sun-the-on'), or Nuestra 
Senora de la Asuncion (English, Assump¬ 
tion ), the chief city of Paraguay, on the 

282 



ASWAIL — 

river Paraguay, picturesquely situated and 
with good public buildings. It was founded 
in 1536 on the feast of the Assumption. Its 
trade is mostly in the yerba tea, hides, 
tobacco, oranges, &c. It was taken and 
plundered by the Brazilians in 1869, and 
some of the leading buildings still remain 
in a half-ruined condition. A railway runs 
for a short distance into the interior. Pop. 
24,838. 

As'wail, the native name for the sloth- 
bear (Ursus labidtus) of the mountains of 
India, an uncouth, unwieldy animal, with 
very long black hair, inoffensive when not 
attacked. Its usual diet consists of roots, 
bees’-nests, grubs, snails, ants, &c. Its flesh 
is in much favour as an article of food. 
When captured young it is easily tamed. 

Asylum, a sanctuary or place of refuge, 
where criminals and debtors sheltered them¬ 
selves from justice, and from which they 
could not be taken without sacrilege. Tem¬ 
ples were anciently asylums, as were Chris¬ 
tian churches in later times. (See Sanc¬ 
tuary.) The term is now usually applied 
to an institution for receiving, maintaining, 
and, so far as possible, ameliorating the 
condition of persons labouring under certain 
bodily defects or mental maladies; some¬ 
times also a refuge for the unfortunate. 

Asymptote (as'im-tot), in geometry, a 
line which is continually approaching a 
curve, but never meets it, however far either 
of them may be prolonged. This may be 
conceived as a tangent to a curve at an 
infinite distance. 

Asyn'deton, a figure of speech by which 
connecting words are omitted; as ‘I came, 
saw, conquered.’ 

Atacama (a-ta-ka/ma), a desert region on 
the west coast of S. America belonging to 
Chili, comprised partly in the prov. of 
Atacama, partly in the territory of Anto¬ 
fagasta. It mainly consists of a plateau 
extending from Copiapb northward to the 
river Loa, and lies between the Andes and 
the sea. It forms the chief mining district 
of Chili, there being here rich silver mines, 
while gold is also found, as well as argen¬ 
tiferous lead, copper, nickel, cobalt, and 
iron; with guano on the coast. The northern 
portion till recently belonged to Bolivia. 
The Chilian prov. of Atacama has an area 
of 43,180 sq. m. and a pop. of 66,067. 

Ataca'mite, a mineral consisting of a 
combination of the protoxide and chloride 
of copper, occurring abundantly in some 
parts of South America, as at Atacama, 

283 


ATCHISON. 

whence it has its name. It is worked as 
an ore in South America, and is exported 
to England. 

AtahuaTpa, the last of the incas, suc¬ 
ceeded his father in 1529 on the throne of 
Quito, whilst his brother Huascar obtained 
the Kingdom of Peru. They soon made war 
against each other, when the latter was de¬ 
feated, and his kingdom fell into the hands 
of Atahualpa. The Spaniards, taking ad¬ 
vantage of these internal disturbances, with 
Pizarro at their head, invaded Peru, and 
advanced to Atahualpa’s camp. Here, while 
Pizarro’s priest was telling the inca how the 
pope had given Peru to the Spaniards, fire 
was opened on the unsuspecting Peruvians, 
Atahualpa was captured, and, despite the 
payment of a vast ransom in gold, was 
executed (1533). 

Atalan'ta, in the Greek mythology, a 
famous huntress of Arcadia. She was to be 
obtained in marriage only by him who 
could outstrip her in a race, the conse¬ 
quence of failure being death. One of her 
suitors obtained from Aphrodite (Venus) 
three golden apples, which he threw behind 
him, one after another, as he ran. Atalanta 
stopped to pick them up, and was not 
unwillingly defeated. There was another 
Atalanta belonging to Bceotia, who cannot 
very well be distinguished, the same stories 
being told about both. 

Ataman. See Hetman. 

At'avism (L. atavus, an ancestor), in bi¬ 
ology, the tendency to reproduce the ances¬ 
tral type in animals or plants which have 
become considerably modified by breeding 
or cultivation; the reversion of a descendant 
to some peculiarity of a more or less remote 
ancestor. 

Ataxy, Ataxia, in medicine, irregularity 
in the animal functions, or in the symptoms 
of a disease. See Locomotor ataxy. 

Atba'ra, the most northerly tributary of 
the Nile. It rises in the Abyssinian high¬ 
lands, receives several large tributaries, and 
enters the Nile about 18° N. 

Atchafalay'a (‘Lost Water’), a river of 
the U. States, an outlet of the Red River 
which strikes off before the junction of that 
river with the Mississippi, flows southward, 
and enters the Gulf of Mexico by Atcha- 
falaya Bay. Its length is 250 miles. 

Atcheen'. See Acheen. 

Atch'ison, acity of Kansas, United States, 
on the Missouri, about 30 miles from Lea¬ 
venworth, an important railway centre with 
an increasing trade. Pop. 1890, 13,963. 



ate-ATHANASIUS. 


A't<5, among the Greeks, the goddess 
of hate, injustice, crime, and retribution, 
daughter of Zeus according to Homer, but 
of Eris (Strife) according to Hesiod. 

At'eles, a genus of American monkeys. 
See Spider-monkey. 

Ateliers Nationaux (a-tl-ya na-syo-no), 
or national workshops, were established by 
the French provisional government in 1848. 
They interfered much with private trade 
as about 100,000 workmen threw themselves 
on the government for work. The breaking 
up of the system led to disorders, but it was 
abolished in July, 1848. 

Atella'nse Fab'ulae (called also Oscan 
plays), a kind of light interlude, in ancient 
Home, performed not by the regular actors, 
but by freeborn young Romans; it origi¬ 
nated from the ancient Atella, a city of the 
Oscans. 

Atesh'ga (the place of fire), a sacred place 
of the Guebres or Persian fire-worshippers, 
on the peninsula of Apsheron, on the w. 
coast of the Caspian, visited by large num¬ 
bers of pilgrims, who bow before the sacred 
flames which issue from the bituminous soil. 

Ath (at), a fortified town of Belgium, in 
the province of Hainaut, on the Dender; 
it carries on weaving, dyeing, and printing 
cottons. Pop. 8260. 

Athabas'ca, a river, lake, and district of 
Canada. The Athabasca river rises on the 
eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in 
the district of Alberta, flows in a n.e. direc¬ 
tion through the district of the same name, 
and falls into Lake Athabasca after a course 
of about 600 miles. —Lake Athabasca, or 
Lake of the Hills, is about 190 miles s.s.E. 
of the Great Slave Lake, with which it is 
connected by means of the Slave River, a 
continuation of the Peace. It is about 200 
miles in length from east to west, and about 
35 miles wide at the broadest part, but gra¬ 
dually narrows to a point at either extre¬ 
mity.—The district of Athabasca, formed 
in 1882, lies immediately e. of British 
Columbia and N. of Alberta; area about 
122,000 sq. miles. It is intersected by the 
Athabasca and the Peace River, and as yet 
has a scanty population. The name is also 
given to a family of Indians. 

Athali'ah, daughter of Ahab king of 
Israel, and wife of Joram king of Judah. 
After the death of her son Ahaziah she 
opened her way to the throne by the murder 
of forty-two princes of the royal blood. She 
reigned six years; in the seventh the high- 
Jehoiada placed Joash, the young aoa 


of Ahaziah, who had been secretly pre¬ 
served, on the throne of his father, and 
Athaliah was slain. See 2 Kings viii. ix. xi. 

Athana'sian Creed, a creed or exposition 
of Christian faith, supposed formerly to have 
been drawn up by St. Athanasius, though 
this opinion is now generally rejected, and 
the composition often ascribed to Hilary, 
bishop of Arles (about 430). It is an ex¬ 
plicit avowal of the doctrines of the Trinity 
(as opposed to Arianism, of which Atha¬ 
nasius was a great opponent) and of the in¬ 
carnation, and contains what are known as 
the ‘ damnatory clauses,’ in which it declares 
that damnation must be the lot of those 
who do not believe the true and catholic 
faith. It is contained in the Book of Com¬ 
mon Prayer, to be read on certain occasion. 

Athana'sius, St., Archbishop of Alexan¬ 
dria, a renowned father of the church, born 
in that city about a.d. 296, died 373. While 
yet a young man he attended the council at 
Nice (325), where he gained the highest es¬ 
teem of the fathers by the talents which he 
displayed in the Arian controversy. He had 
a great share in the decrees passed here, 
and thereby drew on himself the hatred of 
the Arians. Shortly afterwards he was 
appointed archbishop of Alexandria. The 
complaints and accusations of his enemies 
at length induced the Emperor Constantine 
to summon him in 334 before the councils 
of Tyre and Jerusalem, when he was sus¬ 
pended, and afterwards banished to Treves. 
The death of Constantine put an end to this 
banishment, and Constantius recalled the 
holy patriarch. His return to Alexandria 
resembled a triumph. Deposed again in 
340, he was reinstated in 342. Again in 
355 he was sentenced to be banished, when 
he retired into those parts of the desert 
which were entirely uninhabited. He was 
followed by a faithful servant, who, at the 
risk of his life, supplied him with the means 
of subsistence. Here Athanasius composed 
many writings, full of eloquence, to streng¬ 
then the faith of the believers, or expose 
the falsehood of his enemies. When Julian 
the Apostate ascended the throne tolera¬ 
tion was proclaimed to all religions, and 
Athanasius returned to his former position 
at Alexandria. His next controversy was 
with the heathen subjects of Julian, who 
excited the emperor against him, and he 
was obliged to flee in order to save his life. 
The death of the emperor and the accession 
of Jovian (363) again brought him back; 
but Valens becoming emperor, and, tfeo 


Atheism - 

fans recovering the superiority, he was once 
more compelled to flee. He concealed him¬ 
self in the tomb of his father, where he 
remained four months, until Valens allowed 
him to return. From this period he re¬ 
mained undisturbed in his office till he died. 
Of the forty-six years of his official life he 
spent twenty in banishment, and the greater 
part of the remainder in defending the 
Nicene Creed. His writings, which are in 
Greek, are on polemical, historical, and 
moral subjects. The polemical treat chiefly 
of the doctrines of the Trinity, the incarna¬ 
tion of Christ, and the divinity of the Holy 
Spirit. The historical ones are of the 
greatest importance for the history of the 
church. See Athanasian Creed. 

A'theism (Greek, a , priv., and Theos, God), 
the disbelief of the existence of a God or 
supreme intelligent being; the doctrine op¬ 
posed to theism or deism. The term has 
been often loosely used as equivalent with 
infidelity generally, with deism, with pan¬ 
theism, and with the denial of immortality. 

Ath'eling, a title of honour among the 
Anglo-Saxons, meaning one who is of noble 
blood. The title was gradually confined to 
the princes of the blood royal, and in the 
ninth and tenth centuries is used exclusively 
for the sons or brothers of the reigning king. 

Atheling, Edgar. See Edgar Atheling. 

Ath'elney, formerly an island in the midst 
of fens and marshes, now drained and cul¬ 
tivated, in Somersetshire, England, about 
7 miles south-east of Bridgwater. Alfred 
the Great took refuge in it during a Danish 
invasion, and afterwards founded an abbey 
there. 

Ath'elstan, King of England, born 895, 
died 941, succeeded his father, Edward the 
Elder, in 925. He was victorious in his 
wars with the Danes of Northumberland, 
and the Scots, by whom they were assisted. 
After a signal overthrow of his enemies at 
Brunanburgh he governed in peace and with 
great ability. 

Athe'na, or Athene, a Greek goddess, 
identified by the Romans with Minerva, 
the representative of the intellectual powers; 
the daughter of Zeus (Jupiter) and Metis 
(that is, wisdom or cleverness). According 
to the legend, which is perhaps allegorical, 
before her birth Zeus swallowed her mother, 
and Athena afterwards sprang from the 
head of Zeus with a mighty war shout and 
in complete armour. In her character of 
a wise and prudent w r arrior she was con¬ 
trasted with the fierce Ares (Mars). In the 

285 


- ATHENS. 

w r ars of the giants she slew Pallas and En- 
celadus. In the wars of the mortals she 
aided and protected heroes. She is also 
represented as the patroness of the arts of 
peace. The sculptor, the architect, and the 
painter, as well as the philosopher, the 
orator, and the poet, considered her their 
tutelar deity. She is also represented among 
the healing gods. In all these representa¬ 
tions she is the symbol of the thinking fa¬ 
culty, the goddess of wisdom, science, and 
art; the latter, however, only in so far as 
invention and thought are comprehended. 
In the images of the goddess a manly gra¬ 
vity and an air of reflection are united with 
female beauty in her features. As a warrior 
she is represented completely armed, her 
head covered with a gold helmet. As the 
goddess of peaceful arts she appears in the 
dress of a Grecian matron. To her insignia 
belong the ZEgis, the Gorgon’s head, the 
round Argive buckler; and the owl, the 
cock, the serpent, an olive branch, and a 
lance w^ere sacred to her. All Attica, but 
particularly Athens, was sacred to her, and 
she had numerous temples there. Her most 
brilliant festival at Athens was the Pan- 
athenaea. 

Athense'um, the temple of Athena or 
Minerva, at Athens, frequented by poets, 
learned men, and orators. The same name 
was given at Rome to the school which 
Hadrian established on the Capitoline 
Mount for the promotion of literary and 
scientific studies. In modern times the 
same name is given to literary clubs and 
establishments connected with the sciences. 

The Athenceum is also the name of the 
leading British literary journal, established 
in 1828 and published weekly. Among the 
names of those that have been connected 
with it are Sterling, Dilke, Hep worth Dixon, 
Stebbing, &c. 

Athense'us, a Greek rhetorician and gram¬ 
marian, who lived at the end of the second 
and beginning of the third century after 
Christ, author of an encyclopaedic work, in 
the form of conversation, called the Feast 
of the Learned (Deipnosophistae), which is 
a rich but ill-arranged treasure of historical, 
antiquarian, philosophical, grammatical, &c., 
knowledge. 

Athenag'oras, a Platonic philosopher of 
Athens, a convert to Christianity, who wrote 
a Greek Apology for the Christians, ad¬ 
dressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
in 177, one of the earliest that appeared. 

Ath'ens (Gr. Athenai , L. Athena), an- 



ATHEISTS. 


fciently the capital of Attica and centre of 
Greek culture, now the capital of the King¬ 
dom of Greece. It is situated in the central 
plain of Attica, about 4 miles from the Sa¬ 
ronic Gulf or Gulf of Angina, an arm of the 
Aegean Sea running in between the main¬ 
land and the Peloponnesus. It is said to 
have been founded about 1550 b.c. by Ce- 
cr.ops, the mythical Pelasgian hero, and to 
have borne the name Cecropia until under 
Erechtheus it received the name of Athens 


in honour of Athene. The Acropolis, an 
irregular oval crag 150 ft. high, with a level 
summit 1000 ft. long by 500 in breadth, 
was the original nucleus of the city, which 
according to tradition was extended by 
Theseus when Athens became the head of 
the confederate Attic states. The three 
chief eminences near the Acropolis—the 
Areopagus to the north-west, the Pnyx to 
the south-west, and the Museum to the south 
of the Pn} 7 x—were thus included within the 



SJ&gKara 

.m. 


city boundary as the sites of its chief pub¬ 
lic buildings, the city itself, however, after¬ 
wards taking a northeily direction. On the 
east ran the Ilissus and on the west the 
Cephissus, while to the south-west lay three 
harbours—Phalerum, the oldest and nearest; 
the Piraeus, the most important; and Muny- 
chia, the Piraean Acropolis. At the height of 
its prosperity the city was connected with its 
harbours by three massive walls (the ‘long 
walls’). The architectural development of 
Athens may be dated from the rule of the 
Pisistratids (560-510 B.c.), who are credited 
with the foundation of the huge temple of 
the Olympian Zeus, completed by Hadrian 
seven centuries later, the erection of the 
Pythium or temple of Pythian Apollo, and 
of the Lyceum or temple of Apollo Lyceus 
—all near the Ilissus; and to whom were 
due the inclosure of the Academy, a gym¬ 


nasium and gardens to the north of the 
city, and the building of the Agora with its 
Portico or Stoa, Bouleuterium or Senate- 
house, Tholus, and Prytanium. With the 
foundation of Athenian democracy under 
Clisthenes, the Pnyx or place of public 
assembly, with its semicircular area and 
cyclopean wall, first became of importance, 
and a commencement was made to the Dio- 
nysiac theatre (theatre of Dionysus or Bac¬ 
chus) on the south side of the Acropolis. 
After the destruction wrought by the Per¬ 
sians in 480 B.c. Themistocles reconstructed 
the city upon practical lines and with a 
larger area, inclosing the city in new walls 
7^ miles in circumfei'ence, erecting the north 
wall of the Acropolis, and developing the 
maritime resources of the Piraeus; while 
Cimon added to the southern fortifications 
of the Acropolis, placed on it the temple 

286 










ATHENS 


of Wingless Victory, planted the Agora 
with trees, laid out the Academy, and built 
the Theseum on an eminence north of the 
Areopagus; his brother-in-law, Peisianax, 
erecting the famous Stoa Poecile, a hall with 
walls covered with paintings (whence the 
iStoids got their name). Under Pericles the 
highest point of artistic development was 
reached. An Odeium was erected on the 
east of the Dionysiac theatre for the recita¬ 
tions of rhapsodists and musicians; and with 
the aid of the architects Ictinus and Mnes- 


icles and of the sculptor Phidias the Ac¬ 
ropolis was perfected. Covering the whole 
of the western end rose the Propylaea, of 
Pentelic marble and consisting of a central 
portico with two wings in the form of Doric 
temples. Within, to the left of the entrance, 
stood the bronze statue of Athena Proma- 
chus, and beyond it the Erechtheum, con¬ 
taining the statue of Athena Polias; while 
to the right, on the highest part of the Acro¬ 
polis, was the marble Parthenon or temple 
of Athena, the crowning glory of the whole. 



Athens.—The Acropolis and Areopagus. 


Minor statues and shrines occupied the 
rest of the area, which was for the time 
wholly appropriated to the worship of the 
guardian deities of the city. In the interval 
between the close of the Peloponnesian war 
and the battle of Chseronea few additions 
were made. Then, however, the long walls 
and Piraeus, destroyed by Lysander, were 
restored by Conon, and under the orator 
Lycurgus the Dionysiac temple was com¬ 
pleted, the Panathenaic stadium commenced, 
and the choragic monuments of Lysicrates 
and Thrasyllus erected. Later on Ptolemy 
Philadelphus gave it the Ptolemaeum near 
the Theseum, Attalus I. the stoa north-east 
of the Agora, Eumenes II. that near the 
great theatre, and Antiochus Epiphanes 
carried on the Olympium. Under the Ro¬ 
mans it continued a flourishing city, Ha¬ 
drian in the second century adorning it with 
many new buildings. Indeed Athens was 
at no time more splendid than under the 

287 


Antonines, when Pausanias visited and de¬ 
scribed it. But after a time Christian zeal, 
the attacks of barbarians, and robberies of 
collectors made sad inroads among the mo¬ 
numents. About 420 a.d. paganism was 
totally annihilated at Athens, and when 
Justinian closed even the schools of the 
philosophers, the reverence for buildings as¬ 
sociated with the names of the ancient dei¬ 
ties and heroes was lost. The Parthenon 
was turned into a church of the Virgin Mary, 
and St. George stepped into the place of 
Theseus. Finally, in 1456 the place fell 
into the hands of the Turks. The Parthe¬ 
non became a mosque, and in 1687 was 
greatly damaged by an explosion at the 
siege of Athens by the Venetians. Enough, 
however, remains of it and of the neigh¬ 
bouring structures to abundantly attest the 
splendour of the Acropolis; while of the 
other buildings of the city, the Theseum 
and Horologium, or Temple of the Winds, 










ATHENS - 

are admirably preserved, as also are the 
Pnyx, Panathenaic stadium, &c. Soom after 
the commencement of the war of liberation 
in 1821 the Turks surrendered Athens, but 
captured it again in 1826-27. It was then 
abandoned until 1830. In 1835 it became 
the royal residence, and made rapid pro¬ 
gress. The modern city mostly lies north¬ 
wards and eastwards from the Acropolis, 
and consists mainly of straight and well- 
built streets. Among the principal build¬ 
ings are the royal palace, a stately building 
with a fa§ade of Pentelic marble (completed 
1843), the university, the academy, public 
library, theatre, and observatory. The uni¬ 
versity was opened in 1836, and has 1400 
students. There are valuable museums, in 
particular the National Museum and that 
in the Polytechnic School, which embraces 
the Schliemann collection, &c. These are 
constantly being added to by excavations. 
There are four foreign archaeological schools 
or institutes, the French, German, Ame¬ 
rican, and British. Tramways have been 
made in the principal streets, and the city 
is connected by railway (6 miles) with its 
port, the Piraeus. Pop. 85,000. 

Athens, the name of many places in the 
U. States, the chief being in Georgia and 
containing the Georgia University. Pop. 
8627. 

Ath'erine ( Atherina ), the name of a genus 
of small fishes abundant in the Mediterra¬ 
nean and caught in British waters, some of 
them being highly esteemed as food. 

Ath'erstone, a town in Warwickshire, 
England, the reputed birthplace of the poet 
Drayton. Pop. 3667. 

Ath'erton, town of England, Lancashire, 
13 miles north-west of Manchester; cotton- 
factories, collieries, iron-works. Pop. 15,833. 

Athletes (ath'lets; Gr. athletai), comba¬ 
tants who took part in the public games of 
Greece. The profession was an honourable 
one; tests of birth, position, and character 
were imposed, and crowns, statues, special 
privileges, and pensions were among the re¬ 
wards of success .—Athletic sports, if they do 
not hold such an honourable position to-day 
as they did in antiquity, are still practised 
with great enthusiasm and excite the keen¬ 
est interest in their patrons. Among them 
are running, jumping, rowing, swimming, 
cycling, cricket, football, wrestling, throw¬ 
ing the hammer, ‘putting’ the stone, &c. 

Athlone', a town of Ireland, divided by 
the Shannon into two parts, one in West¬ 
meath, the other in Roscommon; about 76 


— ATHOS. 

miles west of Dublin. Its central position 
has made it one of the chief military depots, 
and four railways meet. Pop. 6901. 

Athol, a town in Worcester Co., Mass., on 
Miller river; large manufactures of woollen 
and boots and shoes; 28 miles from Wor¬ 
cester. Pop. 6318. 

Ath'ol, or Athole, a mountainous and 
romantic district in the north of Perthshire, 
Scotland, giving the title to a duke of the 
Murray family. 

Athor, Hathor, or Het-her, an Egyp¬ 
tian goddess, identified with Aphrodite or 
Venus. Her symbol was the cow bearing 
on its head the solar disc and hawk-feather 
plumes. Her chief temple was at Denderah. 
From her the third month of the Egyptian 
year derived its name. 

A'thos (now Hagion Oros or Monte Santo, 
that is, Holy Mountain), a mountain 6700 
feet high, in European Turkey, terminating 
the most eastern of the three peninsulas 
jutting into the Archipelago. The name, 
however, is frequently applied to the whole 
peninsula, which is about 30 miles long by 
5 broad. It is covered with forests, and plan¬ 
tations of olive, vine, and other fruit trees. 
Both the surface and coast-line are irregular. 
The Persian fleet under Mardonius was 
wrecked here in 493 B.C., and to avoid a 
similar calamity Xerxes caused a canal, of 
which traces may yet be seen, to be cut 
through the isthmus that joins the penin¬ 
sula to the mainland. On the peninsula 
there are situated about twenty monas¬ 
teries and a multitude of hermitages, which 
contain from 6000 to 8000 monks and her¬ 
mits of the order of St. Basil. The libra¬ 
ries of the monasteries are rich in literary 
treasures and manuscripts. Every nation 
belonging to the Greek Church has here 
one or more monasteries of its own, which 
are annually visited by pilgrims. The 
various religious communities form a spe¬ 
cies of republic, paying an annual tribute 
of nearly £4000 to the Turks, and governed 
by a synod of twenty monastic deputies and 
four presidents meeting weekly. The privi¬ 
leges which the establishments enjoy they 
owe to Murad II., who, on account of their 
voluntary submission, even before the cap¬ 
ture of Constantinople, granted them his 
protection. At the present day no Moham¬ 
medan except the Aga Bostanji, who acts 
as an intermediary between the monks and 
the sultan, can settle on the peninsula. 
The revenue of the community is derived 
from pilgrims, and from a considerable trade 

288 



ATHY-ATLANTIC OCEAN. 


Ill amulets, rosaries, crucifixes, images, and 
wooden furniture. 

Athy', a town in Ireland, county of Kil¬ 
dare, 37 miles south-west of Dublin, on the 
Barrow, which is here joined by the Grand 
Canal. Its chief trade is in corn. Pop. 4181. 

Atit'lan, a lake and mountain of Central 
America in Guatemala. The lake is about 
24 miles long and 10 broad; the mountain 
is an active volcano 12,160 ft. high. 

Atlan'ta, a city in the United States, 
capital of Georgia, on an elevated ridge, 
7 miles south-east of the Chattahoochee 
River. It is an important railway centre; 
carries on a large trade in grain, paper, 
cotton, flour, and especially tobacco, and pos¬ 
sesses flour-mills, paper-mills, iron works, 
&c. Here are Atlanta University for col¬ 
oured male and female students, a theolo¬ 
gical college, a medical college, &c. Atlanta 
suffered severely during the civil war. Pop. 
1890, 65,533. 

Atlan'tes, or Telamones, in architecture, 
mate figures used in place of columns or 



pilasters for the support of an entablature 
or cornice. Female figures so employed 
are termed caryatides. 

Atlantic City, a fashionable watering- 
place of the U. States, on the coast of New 
Jersey. Pop. 1890, 13,055. 

Atlantic Ocean, the vast expanse of sea 
lying between the west coasts of Europe 
and Africa and the east coasts of North 
and South America, and extending from the 
Arctic to the Antarctic Ocean; greatest 
breadth, between the west coast of Northern 
Africa and the east coast of Florida, 4150 
miles; least breadth, between Norway and 
Greenland, 930 miles; superficial extent, 
25,000,000 square miles. The principal in¬ 
lets and bays are Baffin's and Hudson’s Bays, 
VOL. I. 289 


the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the 
North Sea or German Ocean, the Bay of 
Biscay, and the Gulf of Guinea. The prin¬ 
cipal islands north of the equator are Ice¬ 
land, the Faroe and British Islands, the 
Azores, Canaries, and Cape de Verd Is¬ 
lands, Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and 
the West India Islands; and south of the 
equator, Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan 
da Cunha. 

The great currents of the Atlantic are 
the Equatorial Current (divisible into the 
Main, Northern, and Southern Equatorial 
Currents), the Gulf-stream, the North Af¬ 
rican and Guinea Current, the Southern 
Connecting Current, the Southern Atlantic 
Current, the Cape Horn Current, Rennel’s 
Current, and the Arctic Current. The cur¬ 
rent system is primarily set in motion by 
the trade-winds which drive the water of 
the intertropical region from Africa to¬ 
wards the American coasts. The Main 
Equatorial Current, passing across the 
Atlantic, is turned by the S. American 
coast, along which it runs at a rate of 30 
to 50 miles a day, till, having received part 
of the North Equatorial Current, it en¬ 
ters the Gulf of Mexico. Issuing thence 
between Florida and Cuba under the name 
of the Gulf-stream, it flows with a gradually 
expanding channel nearly parallel to the 
coast of the United States. It then turns 
north-eastward into the mid-Atlantic, the 
larger proportion of it passing southward to 
the east of the Azores to swell the North * 
African and Guinea Current created by the 
northerly winds off the Portuguese coast. 
The Guinea Current, which takes a southerly 
course, is divided into two on arriving at the 
region of the north-east trades, part of it 
flowing east to the Bight of Biafra and 
joining the South African feeder of the 
Main Equatorial, but the larger portion 
being carried westward into the North 
Equatorial drift. Kennel’s Current, which is 
possibly a continuation of the Gulf-stream, 
enters the Bay of Biscay from the west, 
curves round its coast, and then turns north¬ 
west towards Cape Clear. The Arctic Cur¬ 
rent runs along the east coast of Greenland 
(being here called the Greenland Current), 
doubles Cape Farewell, and flows up towards 
Davis’ Strait; it then turns to the south 
along the coasts of Labrador and the United 
States, from which it separates the Gulf- 
stream by a cold band of water. Immense 
masses of ice are borne south by this cur¬ 
rent from the Polar seas. In the interior 

19 



































ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH-ATMOMETER. 


of the North Atlantic there is a large area 
comparatively free from currents, called the 
Sargasso Sea, from the large quantity of 
sea weed (of the genus Sargassum) which 
drifts into it. A similar area exists in the 
South Atlantic. In the South Atlantic, 
the portion of the Equatorial Current which 
strikes the American coast below Cape St. 
Roque flows southward at the rate of from 
12 to 20 miles a day along the Brazil coast 
ilnder the name of the Brazil Current. It 
then turns eastward and forms the South 
Connecting Current, which, on reaching the 
South African coast, turns northward into 
the Main and Southern Equatorial Currents. 
Besides the surface currents, an under cur¬ 
rent of cold water flows from the poles to 
the equator, and an upper current of warm 
water from the equator towards the poles. 

The greatest depth yet discovered is 
north of Porto Rico, in the West Indies, 
namely 27,360 feet. Cross-sections of the 
North Atlantic between Europe and Ame¬ 
rica show that its bed consists of two great 
valleys lying in a north-and-south direction, 
and separated by a ridge, on which there 
is an average depth of 1600 or 1700 fathoms, 
while the valleys on either side sink to the 
depth of 3000 or 4000 fathoms. A ridge, 
called the Wyville- Thomson Ridge, with a 
depth of little more than 200 fathoms above 
it, runs from near the Butt of Lewis to 
Iceland, cutting off the colder water of the 
Arctic Ocean from the warmer water of the 
Atlantic. The South Atlantic, of which the 
greatest depth yet found is over 3000 fa¬ 
thoms, resembles the North Atlantic in 
having an elevated plateau or ridge in the 
centre with a deep trough on either side. 
The saltness and specific gravity of the At¬ 
lantic gradually diminish from the tropics 
to the poles, and also from within a short 
distance of the tropics to the equator. In 
the neighbourhood of the British Isles the 
salt has been stated at one thirty-eighth of 
the weight of the water. The North At¬ 
lantic is the greatest highway of ocean traffic 
in the world. It is also a great area of sub¬ 
marine communication, by means of the 
telegraphic cables that are laid across its bed. 

Atlantic Telegraph. See Telegraph. 

Atlan'tides (-dez), a name given to the 
Pleiades, which were fabled to be the seven 
daughters of Atlas or of his brother Hes¬ 
perus. 

Atlan'tis, an island which, according to 
Plato, existed in the Atlantic over against 
the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar), 


was the home of a great nation, and waS 
finally swallowed up by the sea. The legend 
has been accepted by some as fundamen¬ 
tally true; but others have regarded it as 
the outgrowth of some early discovery of the 
New World. 

Atlan'tosaurus, a gigantic fossil reptile, 
order Dinosauria, obtained in the upper Ju¬ 
rassic strata of the Rocky Mountains, at¬ 
taining a length of 80 feet or more. 

Atlas, an extensive mountain system in 
North Africa, starting near Cape Nun on 
the Atlantic Ocean, traversing Morocco, 
Algiers, and Tunis, and terminating on the 
coast of the Mediterranean; divided generally 
into two parallel ranges, running w. to E., 
the Greater Atlas lying towards the Sahara 
and the Lesser Atlas towards the Mediter¬ 
ranean. The principal chain is about 1500 
miles long, and the principal peaks rise 
above or approach the line of perpetual con¬ 
gelation; Miltsin in Marocco being 11,400 
feet high, and another peak in Marocco 
11,500 feet high. The highest elevations 
are perhaps over 13,000 feet. Silver, anti¬ 
mony, lead, copper, iron, &c., are among 
the minerals. The vegetation is chiefly 
European in character, except on the low 
grounds and next the desert. 

Atlas, in Greek mythology, the name of 
a Titan whom Zeus condemned to bear the 
vault of heaven.—The same name is given 
to a collection of maps and charts, and was 
first used by Gerard Mercator in the six¬ 
teenth century, the figure of Atlas bearing 
the globe being given on the title-pages of 
such works. 

Atlas, in anatomy, is the name of the first 
vertebra of the neck, which supports the 
head. It is connected with the occipital 
bone in such a way as to permit of the nod¬ 
ding movement of the head, and rests on 
the second vertebra or axis, their union al¬ 
lowing the head to turn from side to side. 

Atlas, a kind of silk or silk-satin fabric 
of eastern manufacture. 

Atmidom'eter, an instrument for measur¬ 
ing the evaporation from water, ice, or snow. 
It somewhat resembles Nicholson’s hydro¬ 
meter, being constructed so as to float in 
water and having an upright graduated 
stem, on the top of which is a metal pan. 
Water, ice, or snow is put into the pan, so 
as to sink the zero of the stem to a level 
with the cover of the vessel, and as evapo¬ 
ration goes on the stem rises, showing the 
amount of evaporation in grains. 

Atmom'eter, an instrument for measuring 
290 



ATMOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY. 


the amount of evaporation from a moist sur¬ 
face in a given time. It is often a thin hollow 
ball of porous earthenware in which is in¬ 
serted a graduated glass tube. The cavity 
of the ball and tube being tilled with water 
and the top of the tube closed, the instru¬ 
ment is exposed to the free action of the 
air; the relative rapidity with which the 
water transuding through the porous sub¬ 
stance is evaporated, is marked by the scale 
on the tube as the water sinks. 

At'mosphere, primarily the gaseous en¬ 
velope which surrounds the earth; but the 
term is applied to that of any orb. The 
atmosphere of the earth consists of a mass 
of gas extending to a height variously esti¬ 
mated at from 45 to 212 miles, and pressing 
on every part of the earth’s surface with a 
pressure of about 15 (1473) lbs. per square 
inch. The existence of this atmospheric pres¬ 
sure was first proved by Torricelli, who thus 
accounted for the rush of a liquid to fill a 
vacuum, and who, working out the idea, 
produced the first barometer. The average 
height of the mercurial column counterbal¬ 
ancing the atmospheric weight at the sea- 
level is a little less than 30 inches; but the 
pressure varies from hour to hour, and, 
roughly speaking, diminishes geometrically 
with the arithmetical increase in altitude. 
Of periodic variations there are two maxima 
of daily pressure occurring, when the tem¬ 
perature is about the mean of the day, and 
two minima, when it is at its highest and 
lowest respectively; but the problems of 
diurnal and seasonal oscillations have yet 
to be fully solved. The pressure upon the 
human body of average size is no less than 
14 tons, but as it is exerted equally in all 
directions no inconvenience is caused by it. 
It is customary to take the atmospheric 
pressure as the standard for measuring 
other fluid pressures; thus the steam pres¬ 
sure of 30 lbs. per square inch on a boiler is 
spoken of as a pressure of two atmospheres. 

The atmosphere, first subjected to analysis 
by Priestley and Scheele in the latter part 
of the eighteenth century, consists of a 
mixture of oxygen and nitrogen in the al¬ 
most constant proportion of 20’81 volumes of 
oxygen to 7919 volumes of nitrogen, or, by 
weight, 23*01 parts of oxygen to 76’99 of 
nitrogen. The gases are associated to¬ 
gether, not as a chemical compound, but as 
a mechanical mixture. Upon the oxygen 
present depends the power of the atmos¬ 
phere to support combustion and respiration, 
the nitrogen acting as a diluent to prevent 

291 


its too energetic action. Besides these gases, 
the air contains aqueous vapour in variable 
quantity, ozone, carbonic acid gas, traces of 
ammonia, and, in towns, sulphuretted hydro¬ 
gen and sulphurous acid gas. After thunder¬ 
storms, nitric acid is also observable. In 
addition to its gaseous constituents the 
atmosphere is charged with minute particles 
of organic and inorganic matter. 

Atmospheric electricity, the electricity 
manifested by the atmosphere, and made 
sensibly observable in the lightning flash. 

Atmospheric Engine. See Air-engine. 

Atmospheric Railway, so called in con¬ 
sequence of the motive power being derived 
from the pressure of the atmosphere, or 
from compressed air. The idea of thus ob¬ 
taining motion was first suggested by the 
French engineer Papin, about 200 years ago. 
In 1810, and again in 1827, Mr. Medhurst 
published a scheme for ‘propelling car¬ 
riages through a close-fitting air-tight tunnel 
by forcing in air behind them;’ and in 
1825 a similar project was patented by 
Mr. Vallance of Brighton. About 1835 
Mr. H. Pinkus, an American residing in 
England, patented a pneumatic railway. 
The carriages were to travel on an open 
line of rails, along which a cast-iron tube of 
between 3 and 4 feet diameter was to be 
laid, having a longitudinal slit from 1 to 2 
inches wide and closed by a flexible valve 
along its upper side, through which a con¬ 
nection could be formed between the leading 
carriage and a piston working within the 
tube. This method was improved by Messrs. 
Clegg and Samuda, who in 1840 tried some 
experiments on a portion of the West Lon¬ 
don Railway with sufficient success to in¬ 
duce the government to advance a loan to 
the Dublin and Kingstown Railway Com¬ 
pany, for the construction of a pneumatic 
line from Kingstown to Dalkey. It was 
opened for passenger traffic at the end ot 
1843, and was worked for many months, 
The London and Croydon Company subse< 
quently obtained powers for laying down an 
atmospheric railway by the side of theii 
other line from London to Croydon, and in 
experimental trips in 1845 a speed of 30 
miles an hour was obtained with sixteen 
carriages, and of 70 miles with six carriages. 
But during the intense heat of the summer 
of 1846 the iron tube frequently became so 
hot as to melt the composition which sealed 
the valve, and the line had to be worked by 
locomotives. The mechanical difficulty of 
commanding a sufficient amount of rarefaj- 



ATOLL-ATOMS. 


tion led to the abandonment of the system 
for railway purposes, It has been revived, 
however, for the conveyance of letters and 
parcels in towns by means of tubes of mod¬ 
erate diameter laid beneath the streets. See 
Pneumatic Despatch. 

Atoll', the Polynesian name for coral 
islands of the ringed type inclosing a lagoon 
in the centre. They are found chietly in 
the Pacific in archipelagos, and occasionally 
are of large size. Suadiva Atoll is 44 miles 
by 34; Rimsky is 54 by 20. See Coral. 

Atomic Theory, a theory as to the exis¬ 
tence and properties of atoms (see Atoms)] 
especially, in 
chemistry, the 
theory ac¬ 
counting for 
the fact that 
in compound 
bodies the ele¬ 
ments combine 
in certain con¬ 
stant propor 
tions, by as¬ 
suming that all 
bodies are com¬ 
posed of ulti¬ 
mate atoms, 
the weight of 
which is different in different kinds of mat¬ 
ter. It is associated with the name of 
Dalton, who systematized and extended 
the imperfect results of his predecessors. 
On its practical side the atomic theory 
asserts three Laws of Combining Propor¬ 
tions: (1) The Law of Constant or Definite 
Proportions, teaching that in every chemical 
compound the nature and proportion of the 
constituent elements are definite and inva¬ 
riable; thus water invariably consists of 8 
parts by weight of oxygen to 1 part by 
weight of hydrogen; (2) The Law of Com¬ 
bination in Multiple Proportions, accor¬ 
ding to which the several proportions in 
which one element unites with another in¬ 
variably bear towards each other a simple 
relation; thus 1 part by weight of hydrogen 
unites with 8 parts by weight of oxygen to 
form water, and with 16 parts (i.e. 8x2) 
parts of oxygen to form peroxide of hydro¬ 
gen; (3) The Law of Combination in Recip¬ 
rocal Proportions, that the proportions in 
which two elements combine with a third 
also represent the proportions in which, or 
in some simple multiple of which, they will 
themselves combine; thus in olefiant gas 
hydrogen is present with carbon in the pro¬ 


portion of 1 to 6, and in carbonic oxide 
oxygen is present with carbon in the pro¬ 
portion of 8 to 6, 1 to 8 being also the pro¬ 
portions in which hydrogen and oxygen 
combine with each other. The theory that 
these proportional numbers are, in fact, 
nothing else but the relative weights of 
atoms so far accounts for the phenomena 
that the existence of these laws might have 
been predicted by the aid of the atomic 
hypothesis long before they were actually 
discovered by analysis. In themselves, 
however, the laws do not prove the theory 
of the existence of ultimate particles of 

matter of a cer¬ 
tain relative 
weight; and 
although many 
chemists, even 
without ex¬ 
pressly adopt¬ 
ing the atomic 
theory itself, 
have followed 
Dalton in the 
use of the 
terms atom 
and atomic 
weight, in pre¬ 
ference to pro¬ 
portion , combining proportion, equivalent, 
and the like, yet in using the word 
atom it should be held in mind that it 
merely denotes the proportions in which 
elements unite. These will remain the 
same whether the atomic hypothesis which 
suggested the employment of the term be 
true or false. Dalton supposed that the 
atoms of bodies are spherical, and invented 
certain symbols to represent the mode in 
which he conceived they might combine 
together. 

Atomists. See Atoms. 

Atoms, according to the hypothesis of 
some philosophers, the primary parts of 
elementary matter not further divisible. 
The principal theorists of antiquity upon 
the nature of atoms were Moschus of Sidon, 
Leucippus (510 B.C.), Democritus, Epicurus, 
and Lucretius. These philosophers ex¬ 
plained all phenomena on the theory of the 
existence of atoms possessing various pro¬ 
perties and motions, and are hence some¬ 
times called A tomists. Among the moderns, 
Gassendi illustrated the doctrineof Epicurus. 
Descartes formed from this his system of the 
vortices. Newton and Boerhaave supposed 
that the original matter consists of hard, 

292 



Bird's-eye View of an Atoll. 




























ATONEMENT 


ATTACHMENT. 


ponderable, impenetrable, inactive, and im¬ 
mutable particles, from the variety in the 
composition of which the variety of bodies 
originates. According to Boscovich every 
atom is an indivisible point possessing posi¬ 
tion, mass, and potential force or capacity 
for attraction and repulsion. Upon the dis¬ 
covery of Helmholtz that a vortex in a 
perfect liquid possesses certain permanent 
characteristics, Sir W. Thomson has based 
a theory that atoms are vortices in a homo¬ 
geneous, incompressible, and frictionless 
fluid. As to chemical atoms, see Atomic 
Theory. 

Atonement, in Christian theology, the ex¬ 
piation of sin by the obedience and personal 
sufferings of Christ. The first explicit ex¬ 
position of the evangelical doctrine of the 
atonement is ascribed to Anselm, Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, in 1093. 

Atrato (a-tra'to), a river of S. America, 
in the north-west of Colombia, emptying 
itself by nine mouths into the Gulf of 
Darien; it is navigable by steamers of some 
size for 250 miles, and has long been the 
subject of schemes for establishing water- 
communication between the Atlantic and 
Pacific. 

Atrauli, a town of India, N. W. Pro¬ 
vinces, Aligarh district, clean, well built, 
and with a good trade. Pop. 14,374. 

Atreb'ates, ancient inhabitants of that 
part of Gallia Belgica afterwards called 
A rtois. A colony of them settled in Britain, 
in a part of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. 

At'rek, a river of Asia, forming the 
boundary between Persia and the Russian 
Transcaspian territory, and flowing into the 
Caspian; length 250 miles. 

Atreus (at'rus), in Greek mythology, a 
son of Pelops and Hippodamla, grandson of 
Tantalus and progenitor of Agamemnon. 
He succeeded Eurystheus, his father-in-law, 
as king of Mycense, and in revenge for the 
seduction of his wife by his brother Thyestes 
gave a banquet at which the latter partook 
of the flesh of his own sons. Atreus was 
killed by HUgisthus, a son of Thyestes. The 
tragic events connected with this family fur¬ 
nished materials to some of the great Greek 
dramatists. 

At'riplex, a genus of plants, nat. order 
Chenopodiaceae. See Orache. 

A'trium, the entrance-hall and most im¬ 
portant apartment of a Roman house, gener¬ 
ally ornamented with statues, family por¬ 
traits, and other pictures, and forming the 
reception-room for visitors and clients. It 

393 


was lighted by the compluvium, an opening 
in the roof, towards which the roof sloped 
so as to throw the rain-water into a cistern 
in the floor called the impluvium. 

In zoology the term is applied to the 
large chamber or ‘cloaca’ into which the 
intestine opens in the Tunicata. 

At'ropa, the nightshade genus of plants. 
See Belladonna. 

At'rophy, a wasting of the flesh due to 
some interference with the nutritive pro¬ 
cesses. It may arise from a variety of 
causes, such as permanent, oppressive, and 
exhausting passions, organic disease, a want 
of proper food or of pure air, suppurations 
in important organs, copious evacuations of 
blood, saliva, semen, &c., and it is also some¬ 
times produced by poisons, for example 
arsenic, mercury, lead, in miners, painters, 
gilders, &c. In old age the whole frame 
except the heart undergoes atrophic change, 
and it is of frequent occurrence in infancy 
as a consequence of improper, unwholesome 
food, exposure to cold, damp, or impure air, 
&c. Single organs or parts of the body 
may be affected irrespective of the general 
state of nutrition; thus local atrophy may 
be superinduced by palsies, the pressure of 
tumours upon the nerves of the limbs, or by 
artificial pressure, as in the feet of Chinese 
ladies. 

At'ropin, At'ropine, a crystalline alkaloid 
obtained from the deadly nightshade (A trupa 
Belladonna). It is very poisonous, and pro¬ 
duces persistent dilatation of the pupil. 

At'ropos, the eldest of the Fates, who 
cuts the thread of life with her shears. 

Attache (at'a-sha), a junior member of 
the diplomatic service attached to an em¬ 
bassy or legation. 

Attachment, in law, the taking into the 
custody of the Jaw the person or property 
of one already before the court, or of one 
whom it is sought to bring before it.— 
Attachment of person. A writ issued by 
a court of record, commanding the sheriff 
to bring before it a person who has been 
guilty of contempt of court, either in 
neglect or abuse of its process or of subor¬ 
dinate powers .—Attachment of property. 
A writ issued at the institution or during 
the progress of an action, commanding the 
sheriff or other proper officer to attach the 
property, rights, credits, or effects of the 
defendant to satisfy the demands of the 
plaintiff. The laws and practice concern¬ 
ing the attachment vary in different States. 
—An attachment of privilege , in English 


ATTACK 


ATTERBURY. 


law, is a process by which a man, by virtue 
of his privilege, calls another to litigate in 
that court to which he himself belongs, and 
who has the privilege to answer there. 

Attack', the opening act of hostility by a 
force seeking to dislodge an enemy from its 
position. It is considered more advantageous 
to offer than to await attack, even in a de¬ 
fensive war. The historic forms of attack 
are: 1. The parallel; 2. The form in which 
both the wings attack and the centre is 
kept back; 3. The form in which the centre 
is pushed forward and the wings kept back; 
4. The famous oblique mode, dating at least 
from Epaminondas, and employed by Fred¬ 
erick the Great, where one wing advances 
to engage, whilst the other is kept back, 
and occupies the attention of the enemy by 
pretending an attack. Napoleon preferred 
to mass heavy columns against an enemy’s 
centre. The forms of attack have changed 
with the weapons used. In the days of the 
pike heavy masses were the rule, but the 
use of the musket led to an extended battle- 
front to give effect to the fire. The nature 
of the attack depends upon the condition 
and position of the enemy, upon the pur¬ 
pose of the war, upon the time, place, and 
other circumstances. 

Attain'der, the legal consequences of a 
sentence of death or outlawry pronounced 
against a person for treason or felony, the 
person being said to be attainted. It re¬ 
sulted in forfeiture of estate and ‘corruption 
of blood,’ rendering the party incapable of 
inheriting property or transmitting it to 
heirs; but these results now no longer 
follow. Attainder is scarcely known at 
present in the laws of the United States; 
the term is of rare occurrence in our laws. 

Attaint', a writ at common law against a 
jury for a false verdict, never adopted in 
the United States. 

Attale'a, a genus of American palms, 
comprising the piassava palm, which pro¬ 
duces coquilla-nuts. 

Att'alus, the names of three kings of 
ancient Pergamus, 241-133 B.c., the last 
of whom bequeathed his kingdom to the 
Romans. They were all patrons of art and 
literature. 

At'tar, in the East Indies, a general term 
for a perfume from flowers; in Europe 
generally used only of the attar or otto of 
roses, an essential oil made from Rosa centi- 
folia, the hundred-leaved or cabbage-rose, 
R. damascena or damask-rose, R. moschata 
pr musk-rose, &c., 100,000 roses yielding 


only 180 grains of attar. Cashmere, 
Shiraz, and Damascus are celebrated for 
its manufacture, and there are extensive 
rose farms in the valley of Kezanlik in 
Roumelia and at Ghazipur in Benares. 
The oil is at first greenish, but afterwards 
it presents various tints of green, yellow, 
and red. It is concrete at all ordinary tem¬ 
peratures, but becomes liquid about 84° 
Fahr. It consists of two substances, a hy¬ 
drocarbon and an oxygenated oil, and is fre¬ 
quently adulterated with the oils of rhodium, 
sandal-wood, and geranium, with the addi¬ 
tion of camphor or spermaceti. 

Atten'uation, in brewing, the change 
which takes place in the saccharine wort 
during fermentation by the conversion of 
sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid, with 
diminution of specific gravity. 

At'terbury, Francis, an English prelate, 
born in 1662, and educated at Westminster 
and Oxford. In 1687 he took his degree 
of M.A., and appeared as a controversialist 



Bishop Atterbury. 


in a defence of the character of Luther, 
entitled, Considerations on the Spirit of 
Martin Luther, &c. He also assisted his 
pupil, the Hon. Mr. Boyle, in his famous 
controversy with Bentley on the Epistles 
of Phalaris. Having taken orders in 1691 
he settled in London, became chaplain to 
William and Mary, preacher of Bridewell, 
and lecturer of St. Bride’s. Controversy 
was congenial to him, and in 1706 he com¬ 
menced one with Dr. Wake, which lasted 
four years, on the rights, privileges, and 
powers of convocations. For this service 
he received the thanks of the lower house 

m 



ATTIC-ATTICA. 


of convocation and the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity from Oxford. Soon after the ac¬ 
cession of Queen Anne he was made Dean 
of Carlisle, aided in the defence of the famous 
Sacheverell, and wrote A Representation of 
the Present State of Religion. In 1712 he 
was made Dean of Christ Church, and in 
1713 Bishop of Rochester and Dean of 
Westminster. After the death of the queen 
in 1714 he distinguished himself by his oppo¬ 
sition to George I.; and having entered into 
a correspondence with the Pretender’s party 
was apprehended in August, 1722, and com¬ 
mitted to the Tower. Being banished the 
kingdom, he settled in Paris, where he chiefly 
occupied himself in study and in correspon¬ 
dence with men of letters. But even here, 
in 1725, he was actively engaged in foment¬ 
ing discontent in the Scottish Highlands. 
He died in 1731, and his body was privately 
interred in Westminster Abbey. His ser¬ 
mons and letters are marked by ease and 
grace; but as a critic and a controversialist 
he is rather dexterous and popular than 
accurate and profound. 

Attic, an architectural term variously 
used. An Attic base is a peculiar kind of 
base, used ,by th« ancient architects in the 
Ionic order and by Palladio and some others 
in the Doric. An A ttic story is a low 
story in the upper part of a house rising 
above the main portion of the building. In 
ordinary language an attic is an apartment 
lighted by a window in the roof. 

At'tica, a state of ancient Greece, the 
capital of which, Athens, was once the first 
city in the world. The territory was tri¬ 
angular in shape, with Cape Sunium (Co- 
lonna) as its apex and the ranges of Mounts 
Cithseron and Parnes as its base. On the 
north these ranges separated it from Boeotia; 
on the west it was bounded by Megaris and 
the Saronic Gulf; on the east by the iEgean. 
Its most marked physical divisions consisted 
of the highlands, midland district, and coast 
district, with the two famous plains of Eleusis 
and of Athens. The Cephissus and Ilissus, 
though small, were its chief streams; its prin¬ 
cipal hills, Cithseron, Parnes, Hymettus, 
Pentelicus, and Laurium. Its soil has pro¬ 
bably undergone considerable deterioration, 
but was fertile in fruits, and especially of 
the olive and fig. These are still culti¬ 
vated as well as the vine and cereals, but 
Attica is better suited for pasture than 
tillage. According to tradition the earliest 
inhabitants of Attica lived in a savage 
manner until the time of Cecrops, who 

295 


came, b.c. 1550, with a colony from Egypt, 
taught them all the essentials of civiliza¬ 
tion, and founded Athens. One of Cecrops’ 
descendants founded eleven other cities in 
the regions round, and there followed a 
period of mutual hostility. To Theseus is 
assigned the honour of uniting these cities 
in a confederacy, with Athens as the capital, 
thus forming the Attic state. After the 
death of Codrus, B.c. 1068, the monarchy 
was abolished, and the government vested 
in archons elected by the nobility, at first 
for life, in 752 B.c. for ten years, and in 683 
B.c. for one year only. The severe constitu¬ 
tion of Draco was succeeded in 594 by the 
milder code of Solon, the democratic elements 
of which, after the brief tyranny of the Pis- 
istratids, were emphasized and developed by 
Clisthenes. He divided the people into ten 
classes, and made the senate consist of 500 
persons, establishing as the government an 
oligarchy modified by popular control. 
Then came the splendid era of the Persian 
war, which elevated Athens to the summit 
of fame. Miltiades at Marathon and 
Themistocles at Salamis conquered the 
Persians by land and by sea. The chief 
external danger being removed the rights 
of the people were enlarged; the archons 
and other magistrates were chosen from all 
classes without distinction. The period 
from the Persian war to the time of Alex¬ 
ander (b.c. 500 to 336) was most remarkable 
for the development of the Athenian con¬ 
stitution. Attica appears to have contained 
a territory of nearly 850 square miles, with 
some 500,000 inhabitants, 360,000 of whom 
were slaves, while the inhabitants of the city 
numbered 180,000. Cimon and Pericles (b.c. 
444) raised Athens to its point of greatest 
splendour, though under the latter began 
the Peloponnesian war, which ended with the 
conquest of Athens by the Lacedaemonians. 
The succeeding tyranny of the Thirty, under 
the protection of a Spartan garrison, was 
overthrown by Thrasybulus, with a tem¬ 
porary partial restoration of the power of 
Athens; but the battle of Cheronaea (b.c. 
338) made Attica, in common with the rest 
of Greece, a dependency of Macedon. The 
attempts at revolt after the death of Alex¬ 
ander were crushed, and in 260 B.C. Attica 
was still under the sway of Antigonus Go- 
natas, the Macedonian king. A period of 
freedom under the shelter of the Achaean 
League then ensued, but their support of 
Mithridates led in B.c. 146 to the subjuga¬ 
tion of the Grecian states by Rome. After 



ATTICUS-ATTORNEY. 


the division of the Roman Empire Attica 
belonged to the empire of the East until in 
a.d. 396 it was conquered by Alaric the 
Goth and the country devastated. Attica, 
along with the ancient Boeotia, now forms 
a nome or province (Attike and Yiotia) of 
the Kingdom of Greece, with a pop. of 
185,364. 

At'ticus, Titus Pomponius, a Roman of 
great wealth and culture, born 109 B.C., and 
died 32 B.c. On the death of his father he 
removed to Athens to avoid participation 
in the civil war, to which his brother Sul- 
picius had fallen a victim. There he so 
identified himself with Greek life and litera¬ 
ture as to receive the surname Atticus. It 
was his principle never to mix in politics, 
and he lived undisturbed amid the strife 
of factions. Sulla and the Marian party, 
Cfesar and Pompey, Brutus and Antony, 
were alike friendly to him, and he was in 
favour with Augustus. Of his close friend¬ 
ship with Cicero proof is given in the series 
of letters addressed to him by Cicero. He 
married at the age of 53, and had one 
daughter, Pomponia, named by Cicero 
Atticula and Attica. He reached the age 
of seventy-seven years without sickness, 
but being then attacked by an incurable 
disease,, ended his life by voluntary starva¬ 
tion. He was a type of the refined Epicu¬ 
rean, and an author of some contemporary 
repute, though none of his works have 
reached us.—The name Atticus was given 
to Addison by Pope, in a well-known pas¬ 
sage (Prologue to the Satires addressed to 
Dr. Arbuthnot). 

At'tila (in German, Etzcl), the famous 
leader of the Huns, was the son of Mun- 
dzuk, and the successor, in conjunction with 
his brother Bleda, of his uncle Rhuas. 
The rule of the two leaders extended over 
a great part of northern Asia and Europe, and 
they threatened the Eastern Empire, and 
twice compelled the weak Theodosius II. to 
purchase an inglorious peace. Attila caused 
his brother Bleda to be murdered (444), and 
in a short time extended his dominion over 
all the peoples of Germany and exacted trib¬ 
ute from the eastern and western emperors. 
The Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Gepidae, 
and a part of the Franks united under his 
banners, and he speedily formed a pretext 
for leading them against the Empire of the 
East. He laid waste all the countries from 
the Black to the Adriatic Sea, and in three 
encounters defeated the Emperor Theodo¬ 
sius, but could not take Constantinople. 


Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece all submitted 
to the invader, who destroyed seventy flour¬ 
ishing cities; and Theodosius was obliged to 
purchase a peace. Turning to the west, the 
‘scourge of God,’ as the universal terror 
termed him, crossed with an immense army 
the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Seine, came 
to the Loire, and laid siege to Orleans. 
The inhabitants of this city repelled the 
first attack, and the united forces of the 
Romans under Aetius, and of the Visi¬ 
goths under their king Theodoric, com¬ 
pelled Attila to raise the siege. He retreated 
to Champagne, and waited for the enemy 
in the plains of Chalons. In apparent 
opposition to the prophecies of the sooth¬ 
sayers the ranks of the Romans and Goths 
were broken; but when the victory of Attila 
seemed assured the Gothic prince Thoris- 
mond, the son of Theodoric, poured down 
from the neighbouring height upon the 
Huns, who were defeated with great slaugh¬ 
ter. Rather irritated than discouraged, he 
sought in the following year a new oppor¬ 
tunity to seize upon Italy, and demanded 
Honoria, the sister of Valentinian III., in 
marriage, with half the kingdom as a dowry. 
When this demand was refused he conquered 
and destroyed Aquileia, Padua, Vicenza, 
Verona, and Bergamo, laid w’aste the plains 
of Lombardy, and was marching on Rome 
when Pope Leo I. went with the Roman 
ambassadors to his camp and succeeded in 
obtaining a peace. Attila went back to 
Hungary, and died on the night of his 
marriage with Hilda or Ildico (453), either 
from the bursting of a blood-vessel or by 
her hand. The description that Jornandes 
has left us of him is in keeping with his 
Kalmuck-Tartar origin. He had a large 
head, a flat nose, broad shoulders, and a 
short and ill-formed body; but his eyes 
were brilliant, his walk stately, and his 
voice strong and well-toned. 

Attleborough, a manufacturing town of 
the U. States, in Massachusetts. Pop. 
1890, 7577. See North Attleborough. 

At'tock, a town and fort in Rawal Pindi 
district, Punjab, overhanging the Indus at 
the point where it is joined by the Kabul 
river. It is at the head of the steam navi¬ 
gation of the Indus, and is connected with 
Lahore by railway. It is an important post 
on the military road to the frontier. Pop. 
4210. 

Attor'ney, a person appointed to do some¬ 
thing for and in the stead and name of 
another. An attorney may have general 

296 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL 


AUBER. 


powers to act for another; or his power may 
be special, and limited to a particular act or 
acts. A special attorney is appointed by 
a deed called a power or letter of attorney, 
specifying the acts which he is authorized 
to do. An attorney at lato is a person 
qualified to appear for another before a 
court of law to prosecute or defend any ac¬ 
tion on behalf of his client. The rules and 
qualifications, whereby one is authorized to 
practise as an attorney iu any court, are 
very different iu different countries, and in 
the different courts of the same country. 
There are various statutes on this subject 
in the laws of the several States, and 
almost every court has certain rules, a 
compliance with which is necessary, in 
order to authorize any one to appear in 
court for, and represent any party to a 
suit, without special authority under seal. 
Women are now admitted as practising 
attorneys. 

Attorney-general, in England and Ire¬ 
land, the first law-officer and legal adviser 
of the crown, acting on its behalf in its re¬ 
venue and criminal proceedings, carrying on 
prosecutions in crimes that have a public 
character, guarding the interests of charit¬ 
able endowments, and granting patents. He 
is ex officio the leader of the bar, and, as 
a member of Parliament, has charge of all 
government measures on legal questions. 
The solicitor-general holds a similar posi¬ 
tion, and may act in his place. In the U. 
States the attorney-general is a member of 
the cabinet and the head of the department 
of justice. The individual states have also 
attorneys-general. 

Attraction, the tendency of all material 
bodies, whether masses or particles, to ap¬ 
proach each other, to unite, and to remain 
united. It was Newton that first adopted 
the theory of a universal attractive force, 
and determined its laws. When bodies 
tend to come together from sensible dis¬ 
tances the tendency is termed either the 
attraction of gravitation, magnetism, or 
electricity, according to circumstances; when 
the attraction operates at insensible dis¬ 
tances it is known as adhesion with respect 
to surfaces, as cohesion with respect to the 
particles of a body, and as affinity when the 
particles of different bodies tend together. 
It is by the attraction of gravitation that 
all bodies fall to the earth w'hen unsup¬ 
ported. 

Attrek. See A trek. 

Attribute, in philosophy, a quality or 
297 


property of a substance, as whiteness or 
hardness. A substance is known to us on! y 
as a congeries of attributes. 

In the fine arts an attribute is a symbol re¬ 
gularly accompanying and marking out some 
personage. Thus the caduceus, purse, winged 
hat, and sandals are attributes of Mercury, 
the trampled dragon of St. George. 

Attwood, George, F.R.S., an English 
mathematician, born 1745, died 1807, best 
known by his invention, called after him 
A ttwood's Machine, for verifying the laws of 
falling bodies. It consists essentially of a 
freely moving pulley over which runs a fine 
cord with two equal weights suspended 
from the ends. A small additional weight 
is laid upon one of them, causing it to de¬ 
scend with uniform acceleration. Means 
are provided by which the added weight can 
be removed at any point of the descent, 
thus allowing the motion to continue from 
this point onward with uniform velocity. 

Atys, Attys (at'is), in classical mytho- 
logy, the shepherd lover of Cybfele, who, 
having broken the vow of chastity which lie 
made her, castrated himself. In Asia Minor 
Atys seems to have been a deity, with some¬ 
what of the same character as Adonis. 

Aubagne (o-ban-ye), town in France, de¬ 
partment of Bouches-du-Rhone, with manu¬ 
factures of cottons, pottery, cloth. Pop. 
7660. 

Aubaine, Droit d’ (drwa do-ban). See 
Droit d 1 Aubaine. 

Aube (ob), a north-eastern French de¬ 
partment; area, 2351 sq. m.; pop. 257,374. 
The surface is undulating, and watered by 
the Aube, &c. The N. and N.w. districts are 
bleak and infertile, the southern districts 
remarkably fertile. A large extent of 
ground is under forests and vineyards, and 
the soil is admirable for grain, pulse, and 
hemp. The chief manufactures are worsted 
and hosiery. Troyes is the capital.—The 
river Aube, which gives name to the depart¬ 
ment, rises in Haute-Marne, flows N.w., and 
after a course of 113 miles joins the Seine. 

Aubenas (ob-nii), a town of France, dep. 
Ard&che, with a trade in coal, silk, &c. 
Pop. 5356. 

Auber (o-bar), Daniel Francois Esprit, 
a French operatic composer; born 1782, at 
Caen, in Normandy; died at Paris 1871. 
He was originally intended for a mercantile 
career, but devoted himself to music, study¬ 
ing under Cherubini. His first great suc¬ 
cess was his opera La Bergere Chatelaine, 
produced iu 1820, Iu 1822 he had asso- 



AUBERVILLIERS 


AUCKLAND. 


ciated himself with Scribe as librettist, and 
other operas now followed in quick succes¬ 
sion. Chief among them were Masaniello 
or LaMuette de Portici (1828), FraDiavolo 
(1830), Lestocq (1834), L’Ambassadrice 
(1836), Le Domino Noir (1837), Les Dia- 
mants de la Couronne (1841), Marco Spada 
(1853), La Fiancee du Roi de Garbe (1864). 
Despite his success in Masaniello, his pe¬ 
culiar field was comic opera, in which his 
charming melodies, bearing strongly the 
stamp of the French national character, his 
uniform grace and piquancy, won him a high 
place. 

Aubervilliers (o-bar-vel-ya), a suburban 
locality of Paris, with a fort belonging to 
the defensive works of the city. Pop. 20,000. 

Aubigne, Merle d’. See Merle d'Au- 
bif/ne. 

Aubin (o-ban), a town of Southern France, 
department of Avevron, 20 miles n.e. of 
Villefranche; mining district: coal, sulphur, 
alum, and iron. Pop. 8835. 

Au'brey, John, F.R.S., an English anti¬ 
quary, born in Wiltshire in 1625 or 1626, 
(lied about 1700. He was educated at Ox¬ 
ford; collected materials for the Monasticon 
Anglicanum, and afforded important assis¬ 
tance to Wood, the antiquary. He left 
large collections of manuscripts, which have 
been used by subsequent writers. His 
Miscellanies (London, 1696) contain much 
curious information, but display credulity 
and superstition. His Natural History and 
Antiquities of the County of Surrey was 
published in 1719. 

Au'burn, the name of many places in 
America, the chief being a handsome city 
of New York state, at the N. end of Owasco 
Lake. It is chiefly famous for its state 
prison, large enough to receive 1000 pris¬ 
oners. In the town or vicinity various 
manufactures are carried on. Pop. 25,858. 
—Another Auburn is in Maine, on the 
Androscoggin river, a manufacturing town; 
pop. 11,250. 

Aubusson (o-bu-son), a town of the in¬ 
terior of France, dep. Creuse, celebrated for 
its carpets. Pop. 6723. 

Aubusson (o-bu-son), Pierre d’, grand¬ 
master of the knights of St. John of Jeru¬ 
salem, born in 1423 of a noble French 
family, served in early life against the Turks, 
then entered the order of St. John, obtained 
a commandery, was made grand-prior, and 
in 1476 succeeded the Grand-master Orsini. 
In 1480 the island of Rhodes, the head- 
quartei's of the order, was invaded by a 


Turkish army of 100,000 men. The town 
was besieged for two months and then 
assaulted, but the Turks were obliged to 
retire with great loss. He died at Rhodes 
in 1503. 

Auch (osh), a town of S. W. France, capi¬ 
tal of dep. Gers; the seat of an archbishop, 
with one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in 
France; manufactures linens, leather, &c. 
Pop. 9670. 

Auchenia (a-ke'ni-a). See Llama. 

Auchterar'der, a town, Perthshire, Scot¬ 
land, with manufactures of tweeds, tartans, 
&c. The opposition to the presentee to the 
church of Auchterarder (1839) originated 
the struggle which ended in the formation 
of the Free Church of Scotland. Pop. 2666. 

Auckland, a town of New Zealand, in 
the North Island, founded in 1840, and 
situated on Waitemata Harbour, one of the 
finest harbours of New Zealand, where the 
island is only 6 miles across, there being 
another harbour (Manukau) on the opposite 
side of the isthmus. At dead low water 
there is sufficient depth in the harbour for 
the largest steamers. The working ship 
channel has an average depth of 36 feet, 
and varies in width from 1 to 2 miles. The 
harbour has two good entrances, with light¬ 
house; and is defended by batteries. There 
are numerous wharves and jetties, and a 
couple of graving-docks, one of which—the 
Calliope Dock, opened in 1887—is one of 
the largest in the whole of the Southern 
Seas. Its site is picturesque, the streets are 
spacious, and the public buildings—churches, 
educational establishments, including a 
university college—are numerous and hand¬ 
some. It has a large and increasing trade, 
there being connection with the chief places 
on the island by rail, and regular communi¬ 
cation with the other ports of the colony, 
Australia, and Fiji by steam. It was for¬ 
merly the capital. In 1891, pop., includ¬ 
ing suburbs, 51,127.—The provincial dis¬ 
trict of Auckland forms the northern part 
of North Island, witli an area of 25,746 sq. 
miles; pop. 133,159. The surface is very 
diversified; volcanic phenomena are com¬ 
mon, including geysers, hot lakes, &c.; rivers 
are numerous; wool, timber, kauri-gum, &c., 
are exported. Much gold has been obtained 
in the Thames valley and elsewhere. 

Auckland, William Eden, Lord, an 
English statesman, born 1744; educated at 
Eton and Oxford, called to the bar 1768, 
under-secretary of state 1772, and in 1776 
lord of trade. In 1778 he was nominated 

298 



AUDIPHONE. 


AUCKLAND ISLANDS 


in conjunction with Lord Howe and others 
to act as a mediator between Britain and 
the insurgent American colonies. He was 
afterwards secretary of state for Ireland, 
ambassador extraordinary to France, am¬ 
bassador extraordinary to the Netherlands, 
&c. He was raised to the peerage in 1788, 
and died in 1814. 

Auckland Islands, a group of islands 
about 180 miles S. of New Zealand, dis¬ 
covered in 1806, and belonging to Britain. 
They are of volcanic origin and fertile; and 
the largest, which is 30 miles by 15, has 
two good harbours. No settled inhabitants. 

Auction is a public sale to the party offer¬ 
ing the highest price where the buyers bid 
upon each other, or to the bidder who first 


tioneer are not suffered to control the printed 
conditions of sale. 

Au'cuba, a genus of plants, order Cor- 
naoeae, one species of which, A. japonlca, 
a laurel-like shrub with spotted leaves, a 
native of Japan and China, is now common 
in ornamental grounds in Europe. The 
flowers are dioecious and inconspicuous. For 
a long time only the female plant was cul¬ 
tivated, but latterly the male has been 
introduced, and the fruit, which consists of 
beautiful coral-red berries, is now frequently 
developed, and adds greatly to the attrac¬ 
tiveness of the plant. A. himalaica, also 
brought to Europe, is less hardy. 

Aude (od), a maritime department in the 
8. of France; area, 2437 sq. miles; mainly 
covered by hills belonging to the Pyrenees 
or the Cevennes, and traversed w. to E. by 
a valley drained by the Aude. The loftier 
districts are bleak and unproductive; the 
others tolerably fertile, yielding good crops 
of grain. The wines, especially white, bear 


accepts the terms offered by the vendor 
where he sells by reducing his terms until 
some one accepts them. The latter form is 
known as a Dutch Auction. A sale by auc¬ 
tion must be conducted in the most open 
and public manner possible; and there must 
be no collusion on the part of the buyers. 
Puffing or mock bidding to raise the value 
by apparent competition is illegal. 

Auctioneer', a person who conducts sales 
by auction. It is his duty to state the con¬ 
ditions of sale, to declare the respective bid¬ 
dings, and to terminate the sale by knock¬ 
ing down the thing sold to the highest 
bidder. In the United States, generally, an 
auctioneer must have a license, renewable 
annually. Verbal declarations by an auc- 


a good name; olives and other fruits are also 
cultivated. The manufactures are varied; 
the trade is facilitated by the Canal du Midi. 
Carcassonne is the capital; other towms are 
Narbonneand Castelnaudary. Pop. 332,080. 
—The river Aude rises in the Eastern Py¬ 
renees, and flowing nearly parallel to the 
canal du Midi falls into the Mediterranean, 
after a course of 130 miles. 

Audebert (od-bar), Jean Baptiste, French 
engraver and naturalist, born in 1759, died 
in 1800; published Histoire Naturelle des 
Singes, des Makis, et des Gal^opitheques; 
Histoire des Colibris, &c.; and began His¬ 
toire des Grimpereaux et des Oiseaux de 
Paradis, finished by Desray—all finely illus¬ 
trated works. 

Au'diphone, an acoustic instrument by 
means of which deaf persons are enabled to 
hear. It consists essentially of a fan-shaped 
plate of hardened caoutchouc, which is bent 
to a greater or less degree by strings, and 
is very sensitive to sound-waves. When 








AUDIT 


AUGIER. 


used the up edge is pressed against the 
upper front teeth, with the convexity out¬ 
ward, and the sounds being collected are 
conveyed from the teeth to the auditory 
nerve without passing through the external 
ear. 

Au'dit, an examination into accounts or 
dealings with money or property, along with 
vouchers or other documents connected there¬ 
with, especially by proper officers, or per¬ 
sons appointed for the purpose. Also the 
occasion of receiving the rents from the 
tenants on an estate. 

Au'ditor, in general practice, an officer 
of the court appointed to state items of 
debit and credit between parties in suits 
when accounts are in question, and show 
balances. He may be appointed by courts 
of either law or equity (in the latter case 
called master or examiner), at common law 
in actions of account, and in many States, 
by special statute, in other actions. 

Auditory Nerves. See Ear. 

Audran (o-driin), Gerard, a celebrated 
French engraver, born 1640; studied at 
Rome, was appointed engraver to Louis 
XIY.; died at Paris 1703. He engraved 
Le Brun’s Battles of Alexander, two of 
Raphael’s cartoons, Poussin’s Coriolanus, 
&c., and takes a first place among historical 
engravers. Other members of the family 
were successful in the same profession: Be¬ 
noit, 1661-1721; Claude pdre, 1592-1677; 
Claudels, 1640-84, Germain, 1631-1710; 
Jean, 1667-1756. 

Au'dubon, John James, an American 
naturalist of French extraction, born near 
New Orleans in 1780, was educated in 
France, and studied painting under David. 
In 1798 he settled in Pennsylvania, but 
having a great love for ornithology he set 
out in 1810 with his wife and child, de¬ 
scended the Ohio, and for many years 
roamed the forests in every direction draw¬ 
ing the birds which he shot. In 1826 he 
went to England, exhibited his drawings 
in Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh, 
and finally published them in an unrivalled 
work of double-folio size, with 435 coloured 
plates of birds the size of life (The Birds of 
America, 4 vols., 1827-39), with an accom¬ 
panying text (Ornithological Biography, 
5 vols. 8vo, partly written by Prof. Mac- 
gillivray). On his final return to America 
he laboured with Dr. Bachman on a finely 
illustrated work entitled The Quadrupeds 
of America (1843-50, 3 vols.). He died at 
New York in 1851, 


Auerbach, a manufacturing town of Ger¬ 
many, kingdom of Saxony. Pop. 6258. 

Auerbach (ou'er-baA), Berthold, a dis¬ 
tinguished German author of Jewish extrac¬ 
tion, born 1812, died 1882. He abandoned 
the study of Jewish theology in favour of 
philosophy, publishing in 1836 his Judaism 
and Modern Literature, and a translation of 
the works of Spinoza with critical biography 
(5 vols. 1841). His later works were tales 
or novels, and his Village Tales of the 
Black Forest (Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschich- 
ten) as well as others of his writings have 
been translated into several languages. 
Other works: Barfiissele; Joseph im Schnee; 
Edelweiss; Auf der Hohe; Das Landhaus 
am Rhein; Waldfried; Brigitta. 

Auerstadt (ou'er-stet), battle at, Oct. 14, 
1806. See Jena. 

Augeas (a-je'as), a fabulous king of Elis, 
in Greece, whose stable cont ained 3000 oxen, 
and had not been cleaned for thirty years. 
Hercules undertook to clear away the filth 
in one day in return for a tenth part of the 
cattle, and executed the task by turning the 
river Alpheus through it. Augeas, ha\ing 
broken the bargain, was deposed and slain 
by Hercules. 

Auger (a'ger), an instrument for boring 
holes considerably larger than those bored 
by a gimlet, used by carpenters and joiners, 
ship-wriglits, &c. 

Augereau (ozh-ro), Pierre Francois 
Charles, Duke of Castiglione, Marshal of 
France, son of a mason, born at Paris 1757. 
He adopted the life of a soldier, and by 1796 
had reached the rank of general of division 
in the army of Italy. At Casale, Lodi, 
Castiglione, and Arcole, he highly distin¬ 
guished himself. In 1797 he was at Paris, 
and was the instrument of the coup d'etat of 
the 18th of Fructidor (4th Sept.). In 1799 he 
was chosen a member of the Council of Five 
Hundred. He then obtained the command 
of the army in Holland, and fought till the 
end of the campaign. In 1803 he was ap¬ 
pointed to lead the army collected at Bay¬ 
onne against Portugal. In 1804 he was 
named marshal of the empire, and grand 
officer of the Legion of Honour. He sub¬ 
sequently took part in the battles of Jena 
and Eylau, held a command in Spain, and 
in July, 1813, led the army in Bavaria 
against Saxony, taking part in the battle of 
Leipzig. On Napoleon's abdication he sub¬ 
mitted to Louis XVIII., who named him a 
peer. He died in 1816. 

Augier (6-zhi-a), Emile, a noted French 

300 



AUGITE — 

dramatist, born 1822, came young to Paris, 
entered a lawyer's office, but relinquished 
law for literature; elected an academician 
in 1857, in 1868 a commander of the Legion 
of Honour. His first and one of his best 
dramas was the comedy La Cigue (1844); 
among his other works are L’Aventuriere, 
Gabrielle, Paul Forestier, Le Mariage 
d’Olympe, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, Les 
Effront^s, Le Fils de Giboyer, Les Lions et 
les Renards, Maitre Guerin, Les Fourcham- 
bault, &c. Died in 1889. 

Augite (a'jlt), or Pyroxene, a mineral of 
the hornblende family, an essential compo¬ 
nent of many igneous rocks, such as basalt, 
greenstone, and porphyry. When crystal¬ 
lized it assumes the form of short, slightly 
rhombic prisms, with their lateral edges re¬ 
placed, and terminated at one or both ex¬ 
tremities by numerous planes. Its specific 
gravity is from 3*19 to 3*52; lustre vitreous; 
hardness sufficient to scratch glass. It has 
many varieties, diopside, sahlite, malacolite, 
coccolite, &c., but is composed essentially of 
silica, lime, and magnesia. It may be imi¬ 
tated by the artificial fusion of its consti¬ 
tuents. A transparent green variety found 
at Zillerthal, in the Tyrol, is used in 
jewelry. 

Augsburg (ougz'burA; Lat. Augusta Vin- 
delicorum ), a city of Bavaria, at the junction 
of the Wertach and Lech, antique in ap¬ 
pearance, but with some fine streets, squares, 
and handsome or interesting buildings, in¬ 
cluding a splendid town-hall, a lofty belfry 
(Perlach Tower), cathedral, with paintings 
by Domenichino, Holbein, &c.; St. Ulrich’s 
Church; the bishop’s palace, where the Augs¬ 
burg Confession was presented to the diet, 
now a royal residence; the Fugger Palace, 
or mansion of the celebrated Fugger family, 
the public library, the theatre, the Academy 
of Arts,and the Fuggerrangeof alms-houses. 
Augsburg wasarenowned commercial centre 
in the middle ages, and is still an important 
emporium of South German and Italian 
trade; industries: cotton spinning and weav¬ 
ing, dyeing, woollen manufacture, machinery 
and metal goods, books and printing, chemi¬ 
cals, &c. The Emperor Augustus established 
a colony here about 12 B.c. In 1276itbecame 
a free city, and besides being a great mart 
for the commerce between the north and 
south of Europe, it was a great centre of 
German art in the middle ages. It early 
took a conspicuous part in the Reformation. 
(See next art.) In 1806 it was incorporated 
in Bavaria. Pop. 65,476. 


AUGUSTA. 

Augsburg Confession, a document which 
was presented by the Protestants at the 
Diet of Augsburg, 1530, to the Emperor 
Charles V. and the diet, and being signed by 
the Protestant states was adopted as their 
creed. Luther made the original draught; 
but as its style appeared too violent it was 
given to Melanchthon for amendment. The 
original is to be found in the imperial Aus¬ 
trian archives. Afterwards Melanchthon 
arbitrarily altered some of the articles, and 
there arose a division between those who 
held the original and those who held the 
altered Augsburg Confession. The former 
is received by the Lutherans, the latter by 
the German Reformed. 

Au'gurs, a board or college of diviners 
who, amongst the Romans, predicted future 
events and announced the will of the gods 
from the occurrence of certain signs. These 
consisted of signs in the sky, especially thun¬ 
der and lightning; signs from the flight and 
cries of birds; from the feeding of the sacred 
chickens; from the course taken or sounds 
uttered by various quadrupeds or by ser¬ 
pents; from accidents or occurrences, such 
as spilling the salt, sneezing, &c. The an¬ 
swers of the augurs as well as the signs by 
which they were governed were called au¬ 
guries, but bird-predictions were properly 
termed auspices. Nothing of consequence 
could be undertaken without consulting the 
augurs, and by the mere utterance of the 
words alio die (‘meet on another day’) they 
could dissolve the assembly of the people 
and annul all decrees passed at the meeting. 

Au'gust, the eighth month from January. 
It was the sixth of the Roman year, and 
hence was called Sextilis till the Emperor 
Augustus affixed to it his own name. 

Augus'ta, the name of many ancient 
places, as Augusta Trevirorum, now 
Treves; Augusta Taurinorum, now Turin; 
Augusta Vindelicorum, now Augsburg; &c. 

Augusta (ou-gus'ta), or Agos'ta, a sea¬ 
port in the south-east of Sicily, 12 miles 
north of Syracuse. It exports salt, oil, 
honey, &c. Pop. 13,286. 

Augus'ta, capital of Maine, United States, 
on the river Kennebec, which is crossed by 
a bridge and is navigable for small vessels, 
43 miles from its mouth, while a dam enables 
steamboats to ply for 20 miles further up 
and furnishes immense water-power. Pop. 
10,521. 

Augusta, the capital of Richmond county, 
Georgia, United States, on the left bank of 
the Savannah river, 231 miles from its 



AUGUSTINE 


AUGUSTUS. 


iiiouth; well built, and connected with the 
river by high-level canals; an important 
manufacturing centre, having cotton-mills, 
machine-shops, and railroad works, &c. Pop. 
1890, 33,300. 

Au'gustine (Aukelics Augustinus), St., 
a renowned father of the Christian Church, 
was born at Tagaste, in Africa, in 354, his 
mother Monica being a Christian, his father 
Patricius a Pagan. His parents sent him 
to Carthage to complete his education, but 
he disappointed their expectations by his 
neglect of serious study and his devotion 
to pleasure. A lost book of Cicero’s, called 
Hortensius, led him to the study of phi¬ 
losophy; but dissatisfied with this he went 
over to the Manichseans. He was one of 
their disciples for nine years, but left them, 
went to Rome, and thence to Milan, where 
he announced himself as a teacher of rhe¬ 
toric. St. Ambrose, the bishop of this city, 
converted him to the faith of his boyhood, 
and the reading of Paul’s epistles wrought 
an entire change in his life and character. 
He retired into solitude, and prepared him¬ 
self for baptism, which he received in his 
thirty-third year from the hands of Am¬ 
brose. Returning to Africa, he sold his 
estate and gave the proceeds to the poor, 
retaining only enough to support him. At 
the desire of the people of Hippo Augus¬ 
tine became the assistant of the bishop of 
that town, preached with extraordinary 
success, and in 395 succeeded to the see. 
He entered into a warm controversy with Pe- 
lagius concerning the doctrines of free-will, 
grace, and predestination, and wrote trea¬ 
tises concerning them, but of his various 
works his Confessions is most secure of im¬ 
mortality. He died August 28, 430, while 
Hippo was besieged by the Vandals. He 
was a man of great enthusiasm, self-devo¬ 
tion, zeal for truth, and powerful intellect, 
and though there have been fathers of the 
church more learned, none have wielded a 
more powerful influence. His writings are 
partly autobiographical (as the Confessions), 
partly polemical, homiletic, or exegetical. 
The greatest is the City of God (De Civi- 
tate Oei), a vindication of Christianity. 

Au'gustine, or Austin, St., the Apostle of 
the English , flourished at the close of the 
sixth century, was sent with forty monks 
by Pope Gregory I. to introduce Chris¬ 
tianity into Saxon England, and was kindly 
received by Ethelbert, king of Kent, whom 
he converted, baptizing 10,000 of his sub¬ 
jects in one day. In acknowledgment of 


his tact and success Augustine received the 
archiepiscopal pall from the pope, with in¬ 
structions to establish twelve sees in his 
province, but he could not persuade the 
British bishops in Wales to unite with the 
new English Church. He died in 004 or 
605. 

Au'gustins, or Augustines, members of 
several monastic fraternities who follow 
rules framed by the great St. Augustine, or 
deduced from his writings, of which the chief 
are the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, or 
Austin Canons, and the Begging Hermits or 
Austin Friars. The Austin Canons were in¬ 
troduced into Britain about 1100, and had 
about 170 houses in England and about 25 
in Scotland. They took the vows of chastity 
and poverty, and their habit was a long 
black cassock with a white rochet over it, 
having over that a black cloak and hood. 
The Austin Friars, originally hermits, were 
a much more austere body, went barefooted, 
and formed one of the four orders of men¬ 
dicants. An order of nuns had also the 
name of Augustines. Their garments, at 
first black, were latterly violet. 

Augusto'vo, a town of Russian Poland, 
gov. Suwalki. Pop. 11,094. 

Augus'tulus, Romulus, the last of the 
Western Roman Emperors; reigned for one 
year (475-76), when he was overthrown by 
Odoacer and banished. 

Augus'tus, Caius Julius Cjesar Octavi- 
anus, originally called Caius Octavius , Ro¬ 
man Emperor, was the son of Caius Octa¬ 
vius and Atia, a daughter of Julia, the sister 
of Julius Caesar. He was born 63 B.c., and 
died a.d. 14. Octavius was at Apollonia, in 
Epirus, when he received news of the death 
of his uncle (B.c. 44), who had previously 
adopted him as his son. He returned to 
Rome to claim Caesar’s property and avenge 
his death, and now took, according to usage, 
his uncle’s name with the surname Octa- 
vianus. He was aiming secretly at the 
chief power, but at first he joined the re¬ 
publican party, and assisted at the defeat of 
Antony at Mutlna. He got himself chosen 
consul in 43. Soon after the first triumvir¬ 
ate was formed between him and Antony 
and Lepidus, and this was followed by the 
conscription and assassination of three hun¬ 
dred senators and two thousand knights 
of the party opposed to the triumvirate. 
Next year Octavianus and Antony defeated 
the republican army under Brutus and Cas¬ 
sius at Philippi. The victors now divided 
the Roman world between them, Octavianus 

302 


AUGUSTUS — 

getting the West, Antony the East, and Le- 
pidus Africa. Sextus Poinpeius, who had 
made himself formidable at sea, had now to 
be put down; and Lepidus, who had hitherto 
retained an appearance of power, was de¬ 
prived of all authority (b.c. 36) and retired 
into private life. Antony and Octavianus 
now shared the empire between them; but 



while the former, in the East, gave himself 
up to a life of luxury, and alienated the 
Romans by his alliance with Cleopatra and 
his adoption of Oriental manners, Octa¬ 
vianus skilfully cultivated popularity, and 
soon declared war ostensibly against the 
Queen of Egypt. The naval victory of Ac- 
tium, in which the fleet of Antony and Cleo¬ 
patra was defeated, made Octavianus master 
of the world, B.c. 31. He returned to Rome 
B.C. 29, celebrated a splendid triumph, and 
caused the temple of Janus to be closed in 
token of peace being restored. Gradually 
all the highest offices of state, civil and reli¬ 
gious, were united in his hands, and the new 
title of Augustus was also assumed by him, 
being formally conferred by the senate in 
B.C. 27. Great as was the power given to 
him, he exercised it with wise moderation, 
and kept up the show of a republican form 
of government. Under him successful wars 
were carried on in Africa and Asia (against 
the Parthians), in Gaul and Spain, in Pan- 
nonia, Dalmatia, &c.; but the defeat of Varus 
bv the Germans under Arminius with the 

303 


Augustus il 

loss of three legions, A.b. 9, Was a great blow 
to him in his old age. Many useful decrees 
proceeded from him, and various abuses 
were abolished. He gave a new form to 
the senate, employed himself in improving 
the morals of the people, enacted laws for 
the suppression of luxury, introduced disci¬ 
pline into the armies, and order into the 
games of the circus. He adorned Rome in 
such a manner that it was said, ‘ He found 
it of brick, and left it of marble.’ The people 
erected altars to him, and, by a decree of the 
senate, the month Sextllis was called A ugus- 
tus (our August). He was a patron of litera¬ 
ture; Virgil and Horace were befriended 
by him, and their works and those of their 
contemporaries are the glory of the A ugus- 
tan Age. His death, which took place at 
Nola, plunged the empire into the greatest 
grief. He was thrice married, but had no 
son, and was succeeded by his stepson Ti¬ 
berius, whose mother Livia he had marriedi 
after prevailing on her husband to divorce' 
her. 

Augustus II. (or Frederick-Augus¬ 
tus I.), Elector of Saxony and King of 
Poland, second son of John George III., 
elector of Saxony, was born at Dresden in 
1670, died at Warsaw 1733. He succeeded 
his brother in the electorate in 1694, and 
the Polish throne having become vacant, in 
1696, by the death of John Sobieski, Augus¬ 
tus presented himself as a candidate for it 
and was successful. He joined with Peter 
the Great in the war against Charles XII. of 
Sweden, invaded Livonia, but was defeated 
by Charles near Riga, and at Clissow, be¬ 
tween Warsaw and Cracow. In 1704 he 
was deposed, and two years later formally 
resigned the crown to Stanislaus I., now 
devoting himself to his Saxon dominions. 
In 1709, after the defeat of Charles at Pul- 
towa, the Poles recalled Augustus, who 
united bimself anew with Peter. The two 
monarchs, in alliance with Denmark, sent 
troops into Pomerania, but the Swedish 
general Steinbock defeated the allies at 
Gadebusch, Dec. 20, 1712. The death of 
Charles XII. put an end to the war, and 
Augustus concluded a peace with Sweden. 
A confederation was now formed in Poland 
against the Saxon troops, but through the 
mediation of Peter an arrangement was 
concluded by which the Saxon troops were 
removed from the kingdom. Augustus now 
gave himself wholly up to voluptuousness 
and a life of pleasure. His court was one 
of the most splendid and polished in Europe. 





AUGUSTUS III.-AUMALE. 


The Poles yielded but too readily to the ex¬ 
ample of their king, and the last years of his 
reign were characterized by boundless luxury 
and corruption of manners. His wife left 
him one son. The Countess of Konigsmark 
bore him the celebrated commander Marshal 
Saxe (Maurice of Saxony). 

Augustus III. (or Frederick-Augustus 
II.), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, 
son of Augustus II., born at Dresden 1696, 
succeeded his father as elector in 1733, and 
was chosen King of Poland through the in¬ 
fluence of Austria and Russia. He closely 
followed the example of his father, distin¬ 
guishing himself by the splendour of his 
feasts and the extravagance of his court. 
He preferred Dresden to Warsaw, and 
through his long absence from Poland the 
government sank into entire inactivity. 
During the first Silesian war he formed a 
secret alliance with Austria. The conse¬ 
quence was that during the second Silesian 
war Frederick the Great of Prussia pushed 
on into Saxony, and occupied the capital, 
from which Augustus fled. By the peace of 
Dresden, Dec. 25, 1745, he was reinstated in 
the possession of Saxony. In 1756 he was 
involved anew in a war against Prussia. 
When Frederick declined his proposal of 
neutrality he left Dresden, and entered the 
camp at Pirna, where 17,000 Saxon troops 
were assembled. Frederick surrounded the 
Saxons, who were obliged to surrender, and 
Augustus fled to Poland. On the threat of 
invasion by Russia he returned to Dresden, 
where he died in 1763. His son, Frederick 
Christian, succeeded him as Elector of 
Saxony, and Stanislaus Poniatowski as King 
of Poland. 

Auk, a name of certain swimming birds, 
family Alcidae, including the great auk, the 
little auk, the puffin, &c. The genus Alca, 
or auks proper, contains only two species, 
the great auk ( Alca impennis), and the 
razor-bill ( Alca torda). The great auk or 
gair-fowl, a bird about 3 feet in length, used 
to be plentiful in northerly regions, and also 
visited the British shores, but has become 
extinct. Some seventy skins, about as many 
eggs, with bones representing perhaps a 
hundred individuals, are preserved in vari¬ 
ous museums. Though the largest species 
of the family, the wings were only 6 inches 
from the carpal joint to the tip, totally use¬ 
less for flight, but employed as fins in swim¬ 
ming, especially under water. The tail was 
about 3 inches long; the beak was high, 
short, and compressed: the head, neck, and 


upper parts were blackish; a large spot 
under each eye, and most of the under parts 
white. Its legs were placed so far back as 
to cause it to sit nearly upright. The razor- 



Razor-bill (Alca torda). 


bill is about 15 inches in length, and its 
wings are sufficiently developed to be used 
for flight. Thousands of these birds are 
killed on the coast of Labrador, for their 
breast feathers, which are warm and elastic. 

Aulap'olay, or Alleppi, a seaport on the 
south-west coast of Hindustan, Travancore, 
between the sea and a lagoon, with a safe 
roadstead all the year round; exports tim¬ 
ber, coir, cocoa-nuts, &c. Pop. 30,000. 

Aulic (Lat. aula , a court or hall), an 
epithet given to a council (the Reichshof- 
rath) in the old German Empire, one of the 
two supreme courts of the German Empire, 
the other being the court of the imperial 
chamber ( Reichskammergericht ). It had not 
only concurrent jurisdiction with the latter 
court, but in many cases exclusive jurisdic¬ 
tion, in all feudal processes, and in criminal 
affairs, over the immediate feudatories of 
the emperor and in affairs which concerned 
the imperial government. The title is now 
applied in Germany in a general sense to 
the chief council of any department, poli¬ 
tical, administrative, judicial, or military. 

Au'lis, in ancient Greece, a seaport in 
Boeotia, on the strait called Euripus, be¬ 
tween Boeotia and Euboea. See Iphigenia. 

Aullagas (ou-lya'gas), a salt lake of Bo¬ 
livia, which receives the surplus waters of 
Lake Titicaca through the Rio Desaguadero, 
and has only one perceptible insignificant 
outlet, so that what becomes of its superflu¬ 
ous water is still a matter of uncertainty. 

Aumale (o-mal), a small French town, 
department of Seine Infdrieure, 35 miles 
n.e. of Rouen, which has given titles to 

304 






AUNGERVILLE-AURELIUS ANTONINUS. 


several notables in French history.— Jean 
d’Arcourt, Eighth Count d’Aumale, 
fought at Agincourt, and defeated the Eng¬ 
lish at Gravelle (1423).— Claude II., Due 
d’Aumale, one of the chief instigators of 
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, was killed 
1573.— Charles de Lorraine, Due d’Au¬ 
male, was an ardent partisan of the League 
in the politico-religious French wars of the 
sixteenth century. — Henri - Eugene-Phi- 
lippe Louis d’Orleans, Due d’Aumale, 
son of Louis Philippe, king of the French, 
was born in 1822. In 1847 he succeeded 
Marshal Bugeaud as governor-general of 
Algeria, where he had distinguished him¬ 
self in the war against Abd-el-Kader. After 
the revolution of 1848 he retired to Eng¬ 
land; but he returned to France in 1871, 
and was elected a member of the assembly; 
became inspector-general of the army in 
1879, and was expelled along with the other 
royal princes in 1886. He is author of a 
History of the House of Conde, several 
pamphlets, &c. 

Aun'gerville, Richard, known as Rich¬ 
ard de Bury (from his birthplace Bury St. 
Edmund’s), English statesman, bibliogra¬ 
pher, and correspondent of Petrarch, born 
1281, died 1345. He entered the order of 
Benedictine monks, and became tutor to the 
Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. 
Promoted to several offices of dignity, he 
ultimately became Bishop of Durham, and 
Lord-chancellor of England. During his 
frequent embassies to the Continent he 
made the acquaintance of many of the 
eminent men of the day. He was a dili¬ 
gent collector of books, and formed a library 
at Oxford. Author of Philobiblon, 1473; 
Epistolae Familiarium, including letters to 
Petrarch, &c. 

Aunoy (o-nwa), Countess d’, French 
writer, born 1650, died 1705, was the author 
of Contes des Fees (Fairy Tales), many of 
which, such as The White Cat, The Yellow 
Dwarf, &c., have been translated into Eng¬ 
lish. She also wrote a number of novels, 
historical memoirs, &e. 

Aurangabad', a town of India, in the 
territory of the Nizam of Haidarabad, 175 
miles from Bombay. It contains a ruined 
palace of Aurengzebe and a mausoleum 
erected to the memory of his favourite wife. 
It was formerly a considerable trading 
centre, but its commercial importance de¬ 
creased when Haidarabad became the capi¬ 
tal of the Nizam. Pop. 20,500. 

Aurantia'cese, the orange tribe, a nat. 

VOL. I. 305 


order of plants, polypetalous dicotyledons, 
with leaves containing a fragrant essential 
oil in transparent dots, and a superior pulpy 
fruit, originally natives of India; examples 
comprise the orange, lemon, lime, citron, 
and shaddock. 

Auray (o-ra), a seaport of north-west 
France, dep. Morbihan, with a deaf and 
dumb institute, and within 2 miles St. Anne 
of Auray, a famous place of pilgrimage. 
Pop. 4500. 

Aure'lian, Lucius Domitius Aureli- 
anus, Emperor of Rome, of humble origin, 
was born about 212 A. D., rose to the highest 
rank in the army, and on the death of Clau¬ 
dius II. (270) was chosen emperor. He de¬ 
livered Italy from the barbarians (Alemanni 
and Marcomanni), and conquered the fa¬ 
mous Zenobia, queen of’Palmyra. He fol¬ 
lowed up his victories by the reformation of 
abuses, and the restoration throughout the 
empire of order and regularity. He lost his 
life, a.d. 275, by assassination, when head¬ 
ing an expedition against the Persians. 

AureTius Antoni'nus, Marcus, often 
called simply Marcus Aurelius, Roman 
emperor and philosopher, son-in-law, adopted 
son, and successor of Antoninus Pius, born 
a.d. 121, succeeded to the throne 161, died 
180. His name originally was Marcus 
Annius Verus. He voluntarily shared the 
government with Lucius Verus, whom An¬ 
toninus Pius had also adopted. Brought 
up and instructed by Plutarch’s nephew, 
Sextus, the orator Herodes Atticus, and L. 
Volusius Mecianus, the jurist, he had be¬ 
come acquainted with learned men, and 
formed a particular love for the Stoic phi¬ 
losophy. A war with Parthia broke out in 
the year of his accession, and did not ter¬ 
minate till 166. A confederacy of the 
northern tribes now threatened Italy, while 
a frightful pestilence, brought from the East 
with the army, raged in Rome itself. Both 
emperors set out in person against the 
rebellious tribes. In 169 Verus died, and 
the sole command of the war devolved on 
Marcus Aurelius, who prosecuted it with 
the utmost rigour, and nearly exterminated 
the Marcomanni. His victory over the 
Quadi (174) is connected with a famous 
legend. Dion Cassius tells us that the 
twelfth legion of the Roman army was shut 
up in a defile, and reduced to great straits 
for want of water, when a body of Chris¬ 
tians enrolled in the legion prayed for relief. 
Not only was rain sent, which enabled the 
Romans to quench their thirst, but a tierce 

20 



aurengzebe — aurochs 


storm of hail beat upon the enemy, accom¬ 
panied by thunder and lightning, which so 
terrified them that a complete victory was 
obtained, and the legion was ever after called 
‘ The Thundering Legion.’ After this vic¬ 
tory the Marcomanni, the Quadi, as well as 
the rest of the barbarians, sued for peace. 
The sedition of the Syrian governor Avidius 
Cassius, with whom Faustina, the empress, 
was in treasonable communication, called 
off the emperor from his conquests, but be¬ 
fore he reached Asia the rebel was assassi¬ 
nated. Aurelius returned to Rome, after 
visiting Egypt and Greece, but soon new 
incursions of the Marcomanni compelled 
him once more to take the field. He de¬ 
feated the enemy several times, but was 
taken sick at Sirmium, and died at Vindo- 
bona (Vienna) in 180. His only extant 
work is the Meditations, written in Greek, 
and which has been translated into most 
modern languages. This may be regarded 
as a manual of practical morality, in which 
wisdom, gentleness, and benevolence are 
combined in the most fascinating manner. 
Many believe it to have been intended for 
the instruction of his son Commodus. Au¬ 
relius was one of the best emperors ever 
Rome saw, although his philosophy and the 
magnanimity of his character did not re¬ 
strain him from the persecution of the 
Christians, whose religious doctrines he was 
led to believe were subversive of good gov¬ 
ernment. 

Au'rengzebe (-zeb; ‘ornament of the 
throne’), one of the greatest of the Mogul 
emperors of Hindustan, born in Oct. 1618 or 
1619. When he was nine years old his weak 
and unfortunate father, Shah Jehan, suc¬ 
ceeded to the throne. Aurengzebe was distin¬ 
guished, when a youth, for his serious look, 
his frequent prayers, his love of solitude, his 
profound hypocrisy, and his deep plans. In 
his twentieth year he raised a body of 
troops by his address and good fortune, and 
obtained the government of the Deccan. 
He stirred up dissensions between his bro¬ 
thers, made use of the assistance of one 
against the other, and finally shut his father 
up in his harem, where he kept him pris¬ 
oner. He then murdered his relatives one 
after the other, and in 1659 ascended the 
throne. Notwithstanding the means by 
which he had got possession of power, he gov¬ 
erned with much wisdom. Two of his sons, 
who endeavoured to form a party in their 
own favour, he caused to be arrested and 
put to death by slow poison. He carried on 


many wars, conquered Golconda and Bija- 
pur, and drove out, by degrees, the Mah- 
rattas from their country. After his death 
the Mogul Empire declined. 

Aure'ola, Au'reole, in paintings, an illu¬ 
mination surrounding a holy person, as 
Christ, a saint, or a martyr, intended to 
represent a luminous cloud or haze ema¬ 
nating from him. It is generally of an oval 
shape, or may be nearly or quite circular, 
and is of similar character with the nimbus 
surrounding the heads of sacred personages. 

Au'rqus, the first gold coin which was 
coined at Rome, 207 B. c. Its value varied 
at different times, from about $3 to $6. 

Aurich (ou'reA), a German town, prov. 
of Hanover. Pop. 5390. 

Au'ricle. See Heart. 

Auric'ula, a garden flower derived from 
the yellow Primula Auricula, found native 
in the Swiss Alps, and sometimes called 
bear’s-ear from the shape of its leaves. It 
has for centuries been an object of ctiltiva- 
tion by florists, who have succeeded in rais¬ 
ing from seed a great number of beautiful 
varieties. Its leaves are obovate, entire or 
serrated, and fleshy, varying, however, in 
form in the numerous varieties. The flowers 
are borne on an erect umbel and central 
scape with involucre. The original colours 
of the corolla are yellow, purple, and varie¬ 
gated, and there is a mealy covering on the 
surface. 

Auricular Confession. See Confession. 

Au'rifaber, the Latinized name of Johann 
Goldschmidt, one of Luther’s companions, 
born 1519, became pastor at Erfurt in 1566, 
died there in 1579. He collected the un¬ 
published MSS. of Luther, and edited the 
Epistolae and the Table-talk. 

Auriflamme. See Oriflamme. 

Auri'ga, in astronomy, the Waggoner, a 
constellation of the northern hemisphere, 
containing sixty-eight stars, including Ca- 
pella of the first magnitude. 

Aurillac (o-re-yak), a town of France, 
capital of the dep. Cantal, in a valley 
watered by the Jordanne, about 270 miles 
s. of Paris; well-built, with wide streets; 
copper works, paper works, manufactures of 
lace, tapestry, leather, &c. Pop. 13,727. 

Aurochs (a'roks), a species of wild bull 
or buffalo, the urns of Caesar, bison of Pliny, 
the European bison, Bos or Bonassus Bison 
of modern naturalists. This animal was 
once abundant in Europe, but were it not 
for the protection afforded by the Emperor 
of Russia to a few herds which inhabit the 

306 



AURORA-AURORA BOREALIS. 



forest* of Lithuania it would soon be ex¬ 
tinct. 

Auro'ra (Gr. Eos), in classical mythology, 
the goddess of the dawn, daughter of Hy¬ 
perion and Theia, and sister of Helios and 
Selene (Sun and Moon). She was repre¬ 
sented as a charming figure, ‘ rosy-fingered,’ 
clad in a yellow robe, rising at dawn from 
the ocean and driving her chariot through 
the heavens. Among the mortals whose 
beauty captivated the goddess poets men¬ 
tion Orion, Tithonus, and Ceplialus. 


Auro'ra, an American city, of Kano 
county, Illinois, on Fox I'iver, 40 miles w. 
by s. of Chicago; it has flourishing manu¬ 
factures, railway works, and a considerable 
trade. Pop. 1890, 19,688. 

Auro'ra, one of the New Hebrides islands, 
S. Pacific Ocean, about 30 miles long by 
5 wide. It rises to a considerable elevation, 
and is covered with a luxuriant vegetation. 

Auro'ra Borea'lis, a luminous meteoric 
phenomenon appearing in the north, most 
frequently in high latitudes, the correspond¬ 


ing phenomenon in the southern hemisphere 
being called Aurora Australis, and both 
being also called Polar Light, Streamers, &c. 
The northern aurora has been far the most 
observed and studied. It usually manifests 
itself by streams of light ascending towards 
the zenith from a dusky line of cloud or 
haze a few degrees above the horizon, and 
stretching from the north towards the west 
and east, so as to form an arc with its ends 
on the horizon, and its different parts and 
rays are constantly in motion. Sometimes 
it appears in detached places; at other times 
it almost covers the whole sky. It assumes 
many shapes and a variety of colours, from 
a pale red or yellow to a deep red or blood 
colour; and in the northern latitudes serves 
to illuminate the earth and cheer the gloom 
of the long winter nights. The appearance 
of the aurora borealis so exactly resembles 

307 


the effects of artificial electricity that there 
is every reason to believe that their causes 
are identical. When electricity passes 
through rarefied air it exhibits a diffused 
luminous stream which has all the charac¬ 
teristic appearances of the aurora, and hence 
it is highly probable that this natural phe¬ 
nomenon is occasioned by the passage of 
electricity through the upper regions of the 
atmosphere. The influence of the aurora 
upon the magnetic needle is now considered 
as an ascertained fact, and the connection 
between it and magnetism is further evident 
from the fact that the beams or coruscations 
issuing from a point in the horizon west of 
north are frequently observed to run in the 
magnetic meridian. What are known as 
magnetic storms are invariably connected 
with exhibitions of the aurora, and with spon¬ 
taneous galvanic currents in the ordinary 


Aurora Borealis, as seen from the “ Pandora ” when crossing the Polar Circle. 


















































AURUNGABAD- 

telegraph wires; and this connection is found 
to be so certain that, upon remarking the 
display of one of the three classes of phe¬ 
nomena, we can at once assert that the 
other two are also observable. The aurora 
borealis is said to be frequently accom¬ 
panied by sound, which is variously de¬ 
scribed as resembling the rustling of pieces 
of silk against each other, or the sound of 
wind against the flame of a candle. The 
aurora of the southern hemisphere is quite 
a similar phenomenon to that of the north. 

Aurungafcad. See Aurangabad. 

Aurungzebe. See Aurengzebe. 

Auscultation, a method of distinguishing 
the state of the internal parts of the body, 
particularly of the thorax and abdomen, by 
observing the sounds arising in the part 
either through the immediate application of 
the ear to its surface (immediate ausculta¬ 
tion), or by applying the stethoscope to the 
part, and listening through it (mediate 
auscultation). Auscultation may be used 
with more or less advantage in all cases 
where morbid sounds are produced, but its 
general applications are: the auscultation 
of respiration, the auscidtation of the voice; 
auscultation of coughs; auscultation of sounds 
foreign to all these, but sometimes accom¬ 
panying them; auscultation of the actions 
of the heart; obstetric auscultation. The 
parts when struck also give different sounds 
in health and disease. 

Auso'nia, an ancient poetical name of 
Italy. 

Auso'nius, Decius Magnus, Roman poet, 
born at Burdigala (Bordeaux) about 310 
a.d., died about 392. Valentinian intrusted 
to him the education of his son Gratian, 
and appointed him afterwards quaestor and 
Pretoria 11 prefect. Gratian appointed him 
consul in Gaul, and after this emperor’s 
death he lived upon an estate at Bordeaux, 
devoted to literary pursuits. He wrote 
epigrams, idyls, eclogues, letters in verse, 
&c., still extant, and was probably a Chris¬ 
tian. His poems have no great merit. 

Aus'pices, among the ancient Romans 
strictly omens or auguries derived from 
birds, though the term was also used in a 
wider sense. Nothing of importance was 
done without taking the auspices, which, 
however, simply showed whether the enter¬ 
prise was likely to result successfully or not, 
without supplying any further information. 
Magistrates possessed the right of taking 
the auspices, in which they were usually 
assisted by an augur. Before a war or cam- 


- AUSTRALASIA. 

paign a Roman general always took the 
auspices, and hence the operations were said 
to be carried out ‘under his auspices.’ See 
Augur. 

Aus'sig, a town in Bohemia, near the 
junction of the Bila with the Elbe, 42 miles 
N.N.w. of Prague; has large manufactures 
of woollens, chemicals, &c. Pop. 16,524. 

Aus'ten, Jane, English novelist, born 
1775, at Steventon, in Hants, of which 
parish her father was rector. Her principal 
novels are, Sense and Sensibility; Pride 
and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; and Emma. 
Two more were published after her death, 
entitled Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 
which were, however, her most early at¬ 
tempts. Her novels are marked by ease, 
nature, and a complete knowledge of the 
domestic life of the English middle classes 
of her time. She died in 1817. 

Aus'terlitz, a town with 3452 inhabitants, 
in Moravia, 10 miles E. of Briinn, famous 
for the battle of the 2d of December, 1805, 
fought between the French (70,000 in num¬ 
ber) and the allied Austrian and Russian 
armies (95,000). The decisive victory of 
the French led to the Peace of Pressburg 
between France and Austria. 

Aus'tin, capital of the state of Texas, on 
the Colorado, about 200 miles from its 
mouth, and accessible to steamboats during 
certain seasons. There is a state university 
and other institutions, and a splendid capitol 
built of red granite. Pop. 14,575. 

Aus'tin, John, an English writer on 
jurisprudence, born 1790, died 1859. From 
1826 to 1835 he filled the chair of jurispru¬ 
dence at London University. He served on 
several royal commissions, one of which 
took him to Malta; lived for some years on 
the Continent, and finally settled at Wey- 
bridge in Surrey. His fame rests solely on 
his great works: The Province of Juris¬ 
prudence Determined, published in 1832; 
and his Lectures on Jurisprudence, pub¬ 
lished by his widow between 1861 and 1863. 

— His wife, Sarah, one of the Taylors of 
Norwich, produced translations of German 
works, and other books bearing on Germany 
or its literature; also, Considerations on 
National Education, &c. Born 1793, died 
1867. Her daughter, Lady Duff Gordon, 
translated the Amber Witch, and other 
German works. 

Austin, St. See Augustine. 

Austin Friars. See Augustins. 

Australasia, a division of the globe usu¬ 
ally regarded as comprehending the island* 

308 





G-ebbie & Co. Philadelphia 
































































AUSTRALIA. 


of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, New 
Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Solomon 
Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, the 
Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, and the 
Arru Islands, besides numerous other islands 
and island groups; area, 3,259,199 square 
miles,pop., 1891, 4,285,297. It forms one of 
three portions into which some geographers 
have divided Oceania, the other two being 
Malasia and Polynesia. 

Australia (older name, New Holland), 
the largest island in the world, a sea-girt 
continent, lying between the Indian and 
Pacific Oceans, s.E. of Asia; between lat. 
10° 39' and 39° 11' s.; Ion. 113° 5' and 
153° 16' e. ; greatest length, from w. to e., 
2400 miles; greatest breadth, from N. to s., 
1700 to 1900 miles. It is separated from 
New Guinea on the north by Torres Strait, 
from Tasmania on the south by Bass Strait. 
It is divided into two unequal parts by the 
Tropic of Capricorn, and consequently be¬ 
longs partly to the South Temperate, partly 
to the Torrid Zone. It is occupied by five 
British colonies, namely, New South Wales, 
Victoria, and Queensland in the east; South 
Australia in the middle, stretching from sea 
to sea; and Western Australia in the west. 
Their area and population are as follows 
(but authorities differ as to the areas):— 



Area in 



sq. m. 

Pop. 1891, 

New South Wales. 

310,700 

1,134,207 

Victoria. 

87,884 

1,140,411 

Queensland. 

668,497 

393,718 

South Australia. 

903,690 

315,048 

Western Australia.... 

1,060,000 

49,782 


3-030,771 3,033,166 

Sydney, the capital of N. S. Wales, Mel¬ 
bourne, the capital of Victoria, Adelaide, 
the capital of S. Australia, and Brisbane, 
the capital of Queensland, are the chief 
towns. 

Although there are numerous spacious 
harbours on the coasts, there are few re¬ 
markable indentations; the principal being 
the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the N., the 
Great Australian Bight, and Spencer’s Gulf, 
on the S. The chief projections are Cape 
York Peninsula and Arnhem Land in the 
north. Parallel to the n.e. coast runs the 
Great Barrier Reef for 1000 miles. In great 
part the E. coast is bold and rocky, and is 
fringed with many small islands. Part 
of the S. coast is low and sandy, and 
part presents cliffs of several hundred feet 
high. The N. and w. coasts are generally 
low, with some elevations at intervals. 

309 


The interior, so far as explored, is largely 
composed of rocky tracts and barren plains 
with little or no water. The whole con¬ 
tinent forms^m immense plateau, highest 
in the east, low in the centre, and with a 
narrow tract of land usually intervening 
between the elevated area and the sea. The 
base of the table-land is granite, which 
forms the surface-rock in a great part of 
the south-west, and is common in the higher 
grounds along the east side. Secondary 
(cretaceous) and tertiary rocks are largely 
developed in the interior. Silurian rocks 
occupy a large area in South Australia, on 
both sides of Spencer Gulf. The mountain¬ 
ous region in the south-east and east is 
mainly composed of volcanic, Silurian, car¬ 
bonaceous, and carboniferous rocks yielding 
good coal. No active volcano is known to 
exist, but in the south-east there are some 
craters only recently extinct. The highest 
and most extensive mountain-system is a 
belt about 150 miles wide skirting the whole 
eastern and south-eastern border of the con¬ 
tinent, and often called in whole or in part 
the Great Dividing Range, from forming 
the great water-shed of Australia. A part 
of it, called the Australian Alps, in the 
south-east, contains the highest summits in 
Australia, Mount Kosciusko (7175 feet), 
Mount Clarke (7256), and Mount Towns- 
hend (7353). West of the Dividing Range 
are extensive plains or downs admirably 
adapted for pastoral purposes. The deserts 
and scrubs, which occupy large areas of the 
interior, are a characteristic feature of Aus¬ 
tralia. The former are destitute of vege¬ 
tation, or are clothed only with a coarse 
spiny grass that affords no sustenance to 
cattle or horses; the latter are composed of 
a dense growth of shrubs and low trees, 
often impenetrable till the traveller has 
cleared a track with his axe. 

The rivers of Australia are nearly all 
subject to great irregularities in volume, 
many of them at one time showing a chan¬ 
nel in which there is merely a series of 
pools, while at another they inundate the 
whole adjacent country. The chief is the 
Murray, which,with its affluents theMurrum- 
bidgee, Lachlan, and Darling, drains a great 
part of the interior west of the Dividing 
Range, and falls into the sea on the south 
coast (after entering Lake Alexandrina). Its 
greatest tributary is the Darling, which may 
even be regarded as the main stream. On 
the east coast are the Hunter, Clarence, 
Brisbane, Fitzroy, and Burdekin; on the 








AUSTRALIA. 


-^est, the Swan, Murchison, Gascoyne, Ash¬ 
burton, and De Grey; on the north, the 
Fitzroy, Victoria, Flinders, and Mitchell. 
The Australian rivers are of little service 
in facilitating internal communication. 
Many of them lose themselves in swamps 
or sandy wastes of the interior. A con¬ 
siderable river of the interior is Cooper’s 
Creek, or the Barcoo, which falls into Lake 
Eyre, one of a group of lakes on the south 
side of the continent having no outlet, and 
accordingly salt. The principal of these are 
Lakes Eyre, Torrens, and Gairdner, all of 
which vary in size and saltness according 
to the season. Another large salt lake of 
little depth, Lake Amadeus, lies a little 
west of the centre of Australia. Various 
others of less magnitude are scattered over 
the interior. 

The climate of Australia is generally hot 
and dry, but very healthy. In the tropical 
portions there are heavy rains, and in most 
of the coast districts there is a sufficiency of 
moisture, but in the interior the heat and 
drought are extreme. Considerable portions 
now devoted to pasturage are liable at times 
to suffer from drought. At Melbourne the 
mean temperature is about 56°, at Sydney 
about 63°. The south-eastern settled dis¬ 
tricts are at times subject to excessively 
hot winds from the interior, which cause 
great discomfort, and are often followed by 
a violent cold wind from the south (‘south¬ 
erly bursters’). In the mountainous and 
more temperate parts snow-storms are com¬ 
mon in winter (June, July, and August). 

Australia is a region containing a vast 
quantity of mineral wealth. Foremost come 
its rich and extensive deposits of gold, which, 
since the precious metal was first discovered 
in 1851, have produced a total of more than 
£270,000,000. The greatest quantity has 
been obtained in Victoria, but New South 
Wales and Queensland have also yielded a 
considerable amount. Probably there are 
rich stores of gold as yet undiscovered. Aus¬ 
tralia also possesses silver, copper, tin, lead, 
zinc, antimony, mercury, plumbago, &c., in 
abundance, besides coal (now worked to a 
considerable extent in New South Wales) 
and iron. Various precious stones are found, 
as the garnet, ruby, topaz, sapphire, and 
even the diamond. Of building stone there 
are granite, limestone, marble, and sand¬ 
stone. 

The Australian flora presents peculiarities 
which mark it off by itself in a very decided 
manner. Many of its most striking features 


have an unmistakable relation to the gene¬ 
ral dryneSs of the climate. The trees and 
bushes have for the most part a scanty fo¬ 
liage, presenting little surface for evapora¬ 
tion, or thick leathery leaves well fitted to 
retain moisture. The most widely spread 
types of Australian vegetation are the va¬ 
rious kinds of gum-tree ( Eucalyptus ), the 
shea-oak ( Casuarlnci ), the acacia or wattle, 
the grass-tree ( Xanthorrhcea ), many varies 
ties of Proteaceae, and a great number of 
ferns and tree-ferns. Of the gum-tree 
there are found upwards of 150 species, 
many of which are of great value. Indivi¬ 
dual specimens of the ‘peppermint’ (E. amyy- 
dallna) have been found to measure from 
480 to 500 feet in height. As timber-trees 
the most valuable members of this genus 
are the E. rostrata (or red-gum), E. leucoxy- 
lon, and E. maryinata , the timber of which 
is hard, dense, and almost indestructible. 
A number of the gum-trees have deciduous 
bark. The wattle or acacia includes about 
300 species, some of them of considerable 
economic value, yielding good timber or bark 
for tanning. The most beautiful and most 
useful is that known as the golden wattle 
{A. dcalbdta), which in spring is adorned 
with rich masses of fragrant yellow blos¬ 
som. Palms—of which there are 24 spe¬ 
cies, all except the coco-palm peculiar to 
Australia—are confined to the north and 
east coasts. In the ‘scrubs’ already men¬ 
tioned hosts of densely intertwisted bushes 
occupy extensive areas. The mallee scrub is 
formed by a species of dwarf eucalyptus, the 
mulga scrub by a species of thorny acacia. 
A plant which covers large areas in the arid 
regions is the spinifex or porcupine grass, a 
hard coarse and excessively spiny plant, 
which renders travelling difficult, wounds 
the feet of horses, and is utterly uneatable 
by any animal. Other large tracts are oc¬ 
cupied by herbs or bushes of a more valu¬ 
able kind, from their affording fodder. Fore¬ 
most among those stands the salt-bush 
(A triplex nummularici, order Chenopodi- 
acese). Beautiful flowering plants are nu¬ 
merous. Australia also possesses great 
numbers of turf-forming grasses, such as the 
kangaroo-grass (Anthistiria australis), which 
survives even a tolerably protracted drought. 
The native fruit-trees are few and unimpor¬ 
tant, and the same may be said of the plants 
yielding roots used as food; but exotic fruits 
and vegetables may now be had in the 
different colonies in great abundance and 
of excellent quality. The vine, the olive, 

310 

* 


AUSTRALIA. 


and mulberry thrive well, and quantities of 
wine are now produced. The cereals of 
Europe and maize are extensively cultivated, 
and large tracts of country, particularly in 
Queensland, are under the sugar-cane. 

The Australian fauna is almost unique in 
its character. Its great feature is the nearly 
total absence of all the forms of mammalia 
which abound in the rest of the world, their 
place being supplied by a great variety of 
marsupials—these animals being nowhere 
else found, except in the opossums of Ame¬ 
rica. There are about 110 kinds of marsu¬ 
pials (of which the kangaroo, wombat, ban¬ 
dicoot, and phalangers or opossums, are the 
best-known varieties), over twenty kinds of 
bats, a wild dog (the dingo), and a number of 
rats and mice. Two extraordinary animals, 
the platypus, or water-mole of the colonist 
(Ornithorhynchus), and the porcupine ant- 
eater (Echidna) constitute the lowest order 
of mammals (Monotremata), and are con¬ 
fined to Australia. Their young are pro¬ 
duced from eggs. Australia now possesses 
a large stock of the domestic animals of 
Britain, which thrive there remarkably well. 
The breed of horses is excellent. Horned 
cattle and sheep are largely bred, the first 
attaining a great size, while the sheep im¬ 
prove in fleece and their flesh in flavour. 
There are upwards of 650 different species 
of birds, the largest being the emu, or 
Australian ostrich, and a species of casso¬ 
wary. Peculiar to the country are the 
black-swan, the honey-sucker, the lyre-bird, 
the brush-turkey, and other mound-build¬ 
ing birds, the bower-birds, &c. The parrot 
tribe prepondei*ate over most other groups 
of birds in the continent. There are many 
reptiles, the largest being the alligator, found 
in some of the northern rivers. There are 
upwards of 60 different species of snakes, 
some of which are very venomous. Lizards, 
frogs, and insects are also numerous in va¬ 
rious parts. The seas, rivers, and lagoons 
abound in fish of numerous varieties, and 
other aquatic animals, many of them pecu¬ 
liar. Whales and seals frequent the coasts. 
On the N. coasts are extensive fisheries of 
trepang, much visited by native traders 
from the Indian Archipelago. Some animals 
of European origin, such as the rabbit and 
the sparrow, have developed into real pests 
in several of the colonies. 

The natives belong to the Australian 
negro stock, and are sometimes considered 
the lowest as regards intelligence in 
the whole human family, though this is 

311 


doubtful. At the census of 1881 they were 
believed to number about 31,700, exclusive 
of those in the unexplored parts. They are 
of a dark-brown or black colour, with jet- 
black curly but not woolly hair, of medium 
size, but inferior muscular development. In 
the settled parts of the continent they are 
inoffensive, and rapidly dying out. They 
have no fixed habitations; in the summer 
they live almost entirely in the open air, 
and in the more inclement weather they 



Australian Aboriginals. 

shelter themselves with bark erections of 
the rudest construction. They have no cul¬ 
tivation and no domestic animals. Their 
food consists of such animals as they can 
kill, and no kind of living creature seems 
to be rejected, snakes, lizards, frogs, and 
even insects being eaten, often half raw. 
They are ignorant of the potter’s art. In 
their natural condition they wear little or no 
clothing. They speak a number of different 
languages or dialects. The women are re- 
garded merely as slaves, and are frightfully 
maltreated. They have no religion; they 
practise polygamy, and are said to some¬ 
times resort to cannibalism, but only in 
exceptional circumstances. They are occa¬ 
sionally employed by the settlers in light 



























AUSTRALIA. 


kinds of work, and as horse-breakers; but 
they dislike continuous occupation, and soon 
give it up. The weapons of all the tribes 
are generally similar, consisting of spears, 
shields, boomerangs, wooden axes, clubs, 
and stone hatchets. Of these the boom¬ 
erang is the most singular, being an inven¬ 
tion confined to the Australians. 

Each of the colonies is quite independent 
of the others, having a governor, administra¬ 
tion, and (except Western Australia) a par¬ 
liament of its own. The governors are ap¬ 
pointed by the queen, and all acts passed 
by the colonial legislatures must receive the 
royal assent. Each parliament consists of 
two houses corresponding to the British 
House of Lords and House of Commons, 
the lower house being elected by manhood 
suffrage. Each governor is assisted by a 
ministry, and the machinery of government 
resembles that of the home country. The 
aggregate annual revenue of the colonies is 
about £20,000,000, the annual expenditure 
several millions more. The public debt is 
over £100,000,000. The colonies have a 
considerable defensive force of militia and 
volunteers, also a number of gun-boats, 
torpedo-boats, &c., besides which there is 
always a squadron of British men-of-war on 
the Australian station. It is probable that 
in time the colonies may be united into one 
dominion as has been the case in Canada. 
In 1885 a measure was passed by the im¬ 
perial parliament to enable the whole of 
the Australasian colonies to federate. So 
far the colonies of Victoria, Queensland, 
Tasmania, Western Australia, and Fiji 
have taken advantage of the act, and the 
first meeting of the Federal Council took 
place in January, 1886. There is no estab¬ 
lished church in any of the colonies. The 
denomination which numbers most ad¬ 
herents is the English or Anglican Church, 
next to which come the it. Catholics, Pres¬ 
byterians, and Methodists. Education is 
well provided for, instruction in the primary 
schools being in some cases free and com¬ 
pulsory, and the higher education being 
more and more attended to. There are flour¬ 
ishing universities in Melbourne, Sydney, 
and Adelaide. Newspapers are exceedingly 
numerous, and periodicals of all kinds are 
abundant. There is as yet no native litera¬ 
ture of any distinctive type, but names of 
Australian writers of ability both in prose 
and poetry are beginning to be known be¬ 
yond their own country. 

Pastoral and agricultural pursuits and 


mining are the chief occupations of the 
people, though manufactures and handi¬ 
crafts also employ large numbers. For 
sheep-rearing and the growth of wool the 
Australian colonies are unrivalled, and while 
the production of gold has considerably de¬ 
creased that of wool is constantly on the 
increase. The great bulk of the wool ex¬ 
ported goes to Britain, which in the last 
two or three years has received over 
300,000,000 lbs. from the Australian colonies 
annually. The commerce is rapidly ex¬ 
tending, and becoming every year more 
important to Britain, whence the colonists 
derive their chief supplies of manufactured 
goods in return for wool, gold, and other pro¬ 
duce. Next to wool come gold, tin, copper, 
wheat, preserved meat, and tallow, hides 
and skins, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and wine 
as the most important items of export. 
The chief imports consist of textile fabrics, 
haberdashery, and clothing, machinery and 
metal goods. The aggregate imports in 1891 
amounted to £63,410,644 in value, the ex¬ 
ports, £61,567,665. There are upwards of 
7000 miles of railway in actual use or in 
course of construction, and about 34,000 
miles of telegraph. The longest telegraph 
line is that running northwards across the 
continent from Adelaide. The two chief 
routes for mails between Britain and the 
Australian colonies are by way of the Suez 
Canal, and by San Francisco across the 
American continent. The coinage is the 
same as in the mother country. Banks and 
banking offices are numerous, including post- 
office or other savings-banks for the recep¬ 
tion of small sums. 

It is doubtful when Australia was first 
discovered by Europeans. Between 1531 
and 1542 the Portuguese published the ex¬ 
istence of a land which they called Great 
Java, and which corresponded to Australia, 
and probably the first discovery of the coun¬ 
try was made by them early in the sixteenth 
century. The first authenticated discovery 
is said to have been made in 1601, by 
a Portuguese named Manoel Godinho de 
Eredia. In 1606 Torres, a Spaniard, passed 
through the strait that now bears his name, 
between New Guinea and Australia. Be¬ 
tween this period and 1628 a large portion 
of the coast-line of Australia had been sur¬ 
veyed by various Dutch navigators. In 1664 
the continent was named New Holland by 
the Dutch government. In 1688 Dam- 
pier coasted along part of Australia, and 
about 1700 explored a part of the W, and 

312 

















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AUSTRALIA 

N.W. coasts. In 1770 Cook carefully sur¬ 
veyed the E. coast, named a number of 
localities, and took possession of the country 
for Britain. He was followed by Bligh in 
1789, who carried on a series of observations 
on the N.E. coast, adding largely to the know¬ 
ledge already obtained of this new world. 
Colonists had now arrived on the soil, and 
a penal settlement was formed (1788) at 
Port Jackson. In this way was laid the 
foundation of the future colony of New 
South Wales. The Moreton Bay district 
(Queensland) was settle.d in 1825; in 1835 
the Port Phillip district. In 1851 the latter 
district was erected into a separate colony 
under the name of Victoria. Previous to 
this time the colonies both of Western 
Australia and of South Australia had been 
founded—the former in 1829, the latter in 
1836. The latest of the colonies is Queens¬ 
land, which only took an independent exis¬ 
tence in 1859. The discovery of gold in 
abundance took place in 1851 and caused 
an immense excitement and great influx of 
immigrants. The population was then only 
about 350,000, and was slowly increasing; 
but the discovery of the precious metal 
started the country on that career of pros¬ 
perity which has since been almost unin¬ 
terrupted. Convicts were long sent to Aus¬ 
tralia from the mother country, but trans¬ 
portation to New South Wales practically 
ceased in 1840, and the last convict vessel 
to W. Australia arrived in 1868. Alto¬ 
gether about 70,000 convicts were landed 
in Australia (besides almost as many in 
Tasmania). 

The record of interior exploration forms 
an interesting part of Australian history. 
This has been going on since early in the 
century, and is as yet far from complete. 
There is still a large area of the continent 
of which little or nothing is known, com¬ 
prising especially a vast territory belonging 
to Western Australia, and a portion of South 
Australia. Among the men who have won 
fame in the field of Australian exploration 
are Oxley (1817-23), who partly explored 
the Lachlan and Macquarie, discovered the 
Brisbane, &c.; Hume and Hovell (1824), who 
crossed what is now the colony of Victoria 
from north to south; Cunningham (1827), 
who discovered the Darling Downs; Sturt 
(1828-29), who examined the Macquarie, 
part of the Darling, and the Murrumbidgee, 
which he traced to the Murray, sailing 
down the latter to Lake Alexandrina; in 
1844 he penetrated to near the middle of 

313 


— AUSTRIA. 

the continent from the south; Mitchell 
(1831-36), made extensive explorations in 
N. S. Wales and Victoria; M‘Millan (1839), 
explored and traversed Gippsland; Eyre 
(1840), travelled by the coast from Adelaide 
to King Georges Sound; Leichhardt in 
1844-45 travelled from Brisbane to Port 
Essington, discovering fine tracts of terri¬ 
tory and the numerous rivers flowing into 
the Gulf of Carpentaria; in 1848 he was 
lost in the northern interior, in attempting 
to cross Australia from east to west, and 
nothing further regarding his fate has been 
discovered; Kennedy (1848) was killed in 
exploring Cape York Peninsula; A. C. Gre¬ 
gory (1855-56) explored part of North¬ 
western Australia, and crossed from that to 
the Brisbane district, an important explor¬ 
ing journey; M‘Douall Stuart (1859-60-62) 
crossed the continent from south to north 
and back again nearly in the line of the 
present overland telegraph; Burke, Wills, 
Gray, and King (1860-61), crossed from 
Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but 
Burke, Wills, and Gray perished on the re¬ 
turn journey; E. T. Gregory (1861) explored 
the region of the Ashburton, Fortesque and 
other rivers of north-west Australia; War- 
burton (1873), travelled with camels from 
the centre of the continent to the north-west 
coast; J. Forrest (1874), made an important 
journey in Western Australia; Giles (1874- 
76) explored Central Western Australia; 
Favenc (1878-9), travelled from Brisbane 
to Port Darwin; A. Forrest (1879), ex¬ 
plored part of Northern Australia; Mills 
(1883) traversed with camels a considerable 
stretch of new ground in Western Australia; 
Winnicke (1883—4). also with camels, ex¬ 
plored and mapped about 40,000 sq. miles 
of the unknown interior; Lindsay (1885-6) 
travelled north-west from Lake Eyre, and 
then north-east to the Gulf of Carpentaria. 
He had hoped to find traces of Leichhardt, 
but was unsuccessful. Various subsequent 
explorations have also been made. (See the 
articles on the separate colonies.) 

AustraTioids, one of the five groups into 
which Professor Huxley classifies man, com¬ 
prising the indigenous non-Aryan inhabi¬ 
tants of Central and Southern India, the 
ancient Egyptians and their descendants, 
and the modern Fellahs. 

Austria (in German Oesterreich, that is, 
Eastern Empire), or Austria-Hungary, 
an extensive duplex monarchy in Central 
Europe, inhabited by several distinct nation¬ 
alities, and consisting of two semi-indepen- 



AUSTRIA. 


dent countries, each with its own parliament 
and government, but with one common 
sovereign, army, and system of diplomacy, 
and also with a common parliament. The 
Austrian Empire now has a total area of 
about 240,000 square miles, and is bounded 
8. by Turkey, the Adriatic, and Italy; w. by 
Switzerland, Bavaria, and Saxony; N. by 
Prussia and Russian Poland; and E. by 
Russia and Roumania. On the shores of 
the Adriatic, along the coasts of Dalmatia, 
Croatia, Istria, &c., lies its only sea frontage, 
which is of comparatively insignificant ex¬ 
tent. Besides the two great divisions of 
Austria proper, or ‘ Cisleithan ’ Austria and 
Hungary or ‘ Transleithan ’ Austria, the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy is divided into 
a number of governments or provinces, as 
follows:— 


Divisions. 

Area in 
sq. m. 

Population 
Dec. 31, 1890. 

Austrian Provinces — 



Lower Austria. 

7,654 

4,631 

2,767 

8,670 

4,005 

3,856 

3,084 

11,324 

20,060 

8,583 

1,987 

30,307 

4,035 

4,940 

2,661,799 

785,831 

173,510 

1,282,708 

361,008 

498,958 

695,384 

928,769 

5,843,094 

2,276.870 

605,649 

6,607,816 

646,591 

527,426 

Upper Austria. 

Salzburg. 

Styria. A. 

Carinthia. 

Carniola. 

Coast land. 

Tyrol and Vorarlberg.... 
Bohemia. 

Moravia. 

Silesia. 

Galicia. 

Bukowina. 

Dalmatia. 


Total Austria. 

115,903 

23,895,413 

Hungarian Provinces — 

Hungary (including 
Transylvania). 

108,258 

16,773 

8 

15,122,514 

2,184,414 

29,001 

Croatia and Slavonia.... 
Fiume. 


Total Hungary. 

125,039 

17,335,929 

Total Austria- 

Hungary. 

240,942 

41,231,342 


The estimated population in 1880 was 
37,882,712. The largest cities are Vienna, 
Budapest, Prague, Lemberg, Gratz, Brunn, 
Szegedin, Trieste, Cracow. Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, formerly Turkish, but now 
administered by Austria, have an area of 
19,728 square miles. Pop. 1,336,091. 

The prevailing character of the Austrian 
dominions is mountainous or hilly, the plains 
not occupying more than a fifth part of the 


whole surface. The loftiest ranges belong 
to the Alps, and are found in Tyrol, Styria, 
Salzburg, and Carinthia, the highest sum¬ 
mits being the Ortlerspitzen (12,814 ft.) on 
the western boundary of Tyrol, and the 
Grossglockner (12,300) on the borders of 
Salzburg, Tyrol, and Carinthia. Another 
great range is that of the Carpathians, 
bounding Hungary on the north. The most 
extensive tracts of low or flat land, much 
of which is very fertile, occur in Hungary, 
Galicia, and Slavonia, the great Hungarian 
plain having an area of 36,000 square miles. 
They stretch along the courses of the rivers, 
of which the chief are the Danube, with its 
tributaries the Save, the Drave, the Theiss, 
the Maros, the Waag, the March, the Raab, 
the Inn; also the Elbe and Moldau and the 
Dniester. The Danube for upwards of 800 
miles is navigable for pretty large vessels; 
the tributaries also are largely navigable. 
The lakes are numerous and often pictur¬ 
esque, the chief being Lake Balaton or the 
Plattensee. The climate is exceedingly 
varied, but generally good. The principal 
products of the north are wheat, barley, oats, 
and rye; in the centre vines and maize are 
added; and in the south olives and various 
fruits. The cereals grow to perfection, 
Hungarian wheat and flour being celebrated. 
Other crops are hops, tobacco, flax, and 
hemp. Wine is largely made, but the wines 
are inferior on the whole, with exception of 
a few kinds, including Tokay. The forests 
cover 70,000 square miles, or one-third of 
the productive soil of the empire. Sheep 
and cattle are largely reared.—Wild deer, 
wild swine, chamois, foxes, lynxes, and a 
species of small black bear are found in 
many districts, the fox and lynx being par¬ 
ticularly abundant. Herds of a small native 
breed of horses roam wild over the plains of 
Hungary.—In mineral productions Austria 
is very rich, possessing, with the exception of 
platinum, all the useful metals, the total 
annual value of the mineral products of the 
Austrian Empire being estimated at up¬ 
wards of $60,000,000, the principal being 
coal, salt, and iron. 

Manufactures are in the most flourishing 
condition in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and 
Lower Austria; less so in the eastern prov¬ 
inces, and insignificant in Dalmatia, Buko- 
wina, Herzegovina, &c. Among the most 
important manufactures are those of ma¬ 
chinery and metal goods, Austria holding 
a high place for the manufacture of mu¬ 
sical and scientific instruments, gold and 

314 



































AUSTRIA. 


silver plate, and jewelry; of stone and 
china-ware, and of glass, which is one of 
the oldest and most highly developed indus¬ 
tries in Austria; of chemicals; of sugar 
from beet; of beer, spirits, &c., and espe¬ 
cially the manufactures of woollen, cotton, 
hemp, and flax. The manufacture of to¬ 
bacco is a state monopoly. Tanning is car¬ 
ried on to a great extent, and in the pro¬ 
duction of gloves (in Vienna and Prague), 
Austria stands next to France. 

In addition to the general import and ex¬ 
port trade Austria carries on a very con¬ 
siderable amount of business in the transit 
of goods through her territory. In 1889 
the total value of imports into Austria- 
Hungary was 589,000,000 florins, of exports, 
766,000,000 florins; the value of imports 
in 1890,610,000,000 florins; exports, 771,- 
000,000 florins. Among imports are cotton 
and other fibres, textile goods and yarn, 
metals, machinery, drugs, chemicals, oils, 
fats, hides, skins, &c. The chief exports 
are cereals, animals, metallic goods, woven 
fabrics, pottery and glass manufactures. 
Nearly two-thirds of the commerce is with 
Germany, next in importance being the 
trade with Roumania, Italy, and Russia. 
The exports direct to the United Kingdom 
in 1890 were £1,728,337, the imports of 
British produce thence, £1,283,209; these 
amounts do not include indirect exports and 
imports through other countries. The staple 
export to the United Kingdom is corn and 
flour. The chief imports from it are cot¬ 
ton manufactures, machinery and metals, 
woollen goods, fish, &c. The mercantile 
navy of Austria has a total burden of about 
325,000 tons. The principal ports are Trieste, 
Pola, and Fiume. There are about 14,000 
miles of railway open. Accounts are kept 
in gulden or florins of 100 kreutzers each, 
the florin being nominally = 2s. Practically 
the chief medium of exchange is bank-notes. 
The Austrian centner or hundredweight = 
123^ lbs. avoirdupois; the metze , the largest 
dry measure = 1*7 bushel; the eimer — 14*94 
wine gallons; the jock of land = 1'43 English 
acre. 

None of the European states, except 
Russia, exhibits such a diversity of race and 
language as the Austrian Empire. The 
Slavs—who differ greatly, however, amongst 
themselves in language and civilization— 
amount to above 16,000,000, or 45 per cent 
of the total population, and form the great 
mass of the population of Bohemia, Mo¬ 
ravia, Carniola, Galicia, Dalmatia, Croatia, 

315 


and Slavonia, and Northern Hungary, and 
half the population of Silesia and Bukowina. 
The Germans, about 9,000,000, form almost 
the sole population of the archduchy of 
Austria, Salzburg, the greatest portion of 
Styria and Carinthia, almost the whole of 
Tyrol and Vorarlberg, large portions of Bo¬ 
hemia and Moravia, the whole of West 
Silesia, &c.; and they are also numerous in 
Hungary and Transylvania. The Magyars 
or Hungarians (6,300,000) form the bulk of 
the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hungary 
and Eastern Transylvania. Of the Italic or 
Western Romanic stock there are about 
700,000, and in the south-east about 2,500,000 
of the Roumanian or Eastern Romanic stock. 
The number of Jews is above 1,000,000; and 
there are other races, such as the Gypsies 
(150,000), who are most numerous in Hun¬ 
gary and Transylvania, and the Albanians 
in Dalmatia and the adjacent parts. The 
population, generally speaking, decreases in 
density from west to east. 

The state religion of Austria is the 
Roman Catholic, but the civil power exer¬ 
cises supreme control in all ecclesiastical 
matters. In 1890 there were in the Aus¬ 
trian portion of the monarchy 18,934,000 
Roman Catholics, 2,814,000 Greek Catho¬ 
lics united to the Roman Church, 493,542 
non-united, 436,000 Protestants, and 
1,143,000 Jews. In Hungary and Tran¬ 
sylvania there were 6,478,73i Roman Ca¬ 
tholics, 1,486,903 Greek united and 1,931,276 
non-united, 3,139,758 Protestants, and 
624,680 Jews. 

The intellectual culture of the people is 
highest in the German provinces, but in 
some of the other provinces the illiterates 
number as many as 80 to 90 per cent. Yet 
for a number of years attendance on the 
elementary schools has been compulsory on 
all children from their sixth to the end of 
their twelfth year; and there are higher 
schools on which attendance is compulsory 
for young people of thirteen to fifteen years 
(not elsewhere educated). There are numer¬ 
ous gymnasia and ‘real-schools,’ the gym¬ 
nasia being intended chiefly to prepare 
pupils for the universities, while in the real- 
schools a more practical end is kept in view, 
and modern languages and physical science 
form the groundwork of the educational 
course; also agricultural, commercial, indus¬ 
trial, art, music, and other special schools. 
There are eleven universities, viz. in Vienna, 
Prague (2), Budapest, Gratz, Cracow, Lem¬ 
berg, Innsbruck, Klausenburg, Agram, and 


AUSTRIA, 


Czernowitz. Most of these have four facul¬ 
ties—Catholic theology, law and politics, 
medicine, and philosophy. 

The ruler of the Austro-Hungarian mo¬ 
narchy has the title of emperor so far as 
concerns his Austrian dominions, but he 
is only king of Hungary. All matters 
affecting the joint interests of the two 
divisions of the empire, such as foreign 
affairs, war, and finance, are dealt with by 
a supreme body known as the Delegations 
—a parliament of 120 members, one-half 
of whom are chosen by and represent the 
legislature of German Austria and the other 
half that of Hungary. The legislative centre 
of the Austrian division of the empire is the 
Reichsrath, or council of the realm, consist¬ 
ing of an upper house (Herrenhaus),composed 
of princes of the imperial family, nobles with 
the hereditary right to sit, archbishops and 
life-members nominated by the emperor; 
and a lower house (Abgeordnetenhaus) of 
353 elected deputies. There are seventeen 
provincial diets or assemblies, each pro¬ 
vincial division having one. In the Hun¬ 
garian division of the empire the legislative 
power is vested in the king and the diet or 
Reichstag conjointly, the latter consisting of 
an upper house or house of magnates and of a 
lower house or house of representatives, the 
latter elected by all citizens of full age paying 
direct taxes to the amount of 16s. a year. 
The powers of the Hungarian Reichstag 
correspond to those of the Reichsrath of the 
Cisleithan provinces. There being three dis¬ 
tinct parliaments in the empire, there are also 
three budgets, that, viz. for the whole empire, 
that for Cisleithan, and that for Transleithan 
Austria. The budget estimates for the whole 
empire for 1892 were 979,288,494 florins (the 
revenue balancing the expenditure); for 
Cisleithan Austria (1892) revenue was esti¬ 
mated at585,954,126 florins, and expenditure 
583,947,553 florins; and for Transleithan 
Austria the estimated revenue and expendi¬ 
ture were 395,353,936 florins and 395,340,941 
florins respectively. A small portion of the 
imperial revenue of Austria is derived from 
customs and other sources, 70 per cent, of 
the remainder being made up by the Cis¬ 
leithan and 30 per cent, by the Trans¬ 
leithan divisions of the empire. The debt 
of the empire(1891)is5,620,185,000florins. 

Military service is obligatory on all citi¬ 
zens capable of bearing arms who have at¬ 
tained the age of twenty. The period of ser¬ 
vice is twelve years,of which three are passed 
in the line, seven in the reserve, and two 


in the landwehr. The army numbers over 
290,000 men (including officers) on the peace¬ 
footing and over 1,500,000 on the war¬ 
footing. The most important portion of 
the Austrian navy comprises 12 iron-clads, 
of from 5 to 14-inch armour, the largest 
having a tonnage of over 7000, and carry¬ 
ing 27-ton guns; besides gun-boats, torpedo 
vessels, and other vessels, mostly small and 
intended for coast defence. The crews num¬ 
ber about 10,000 officers and men. 

History .—In 791 Charlemagne drove the 
Avars from the territory between the Ens 
and the Raab, and united it to his empire 
under the name of the Eastern Mark (that 
is March or boundary land); and from the 
establishment by him of a margraviate in 
this new province the present empire took 
its rise. On the invasion of Germany by 
the Hungarians it became subject to them 
from 900 till 955, when Otho I., by the vic¬ 
tory of Augsburg, reunited a great part of 
this province to the German Empire, which 
by 1043 had extended its limits to the 
Leitha. The margraviate of Austria was 
hereditary in the family of the counts of 
Babenberg (Bamberg) from 982 till 1156, 
in which year the boundaries of Austria 
were extended so as to include the territory 
above the Ens, and the whole was created 
a duchy. The territory was still further 
increased in 1192 by the gift of the duchy 
of Styria as a fief from the Emperor Henry 
VI., Vienna being by this time the capital. 
The male line of the house of Bamberg 
became extinct in 1246, and the Emperor 
Frederick II. declared Austria and Styria 
a vacant fief, the hereditary property of the 
German emperors. In 1282 the Emperor 
Rudolph granted Austria, Styria, and Ca- 
rinthia, to his two sons, Albert and Rudolph. 
The former became sole ruler (duke), and 
since then Austria has been under the still- 
reigning house of Hapsburg. Albert, who 
was an energetic ruler, was elected emperor 
in 1298, but was assassinated in 1308. The 
first of his successors, we need specially 
mention, was Albert V., son-in-law of the 
Emperor Sigismund. He assisted Sigis- 
mund in the Hussite wars, and was elected 
after his death King of Hungary and of 
Bohemia, and German emperor (1438). 
Ladislaus, his posthumous son, was the last 
of the Austrian line proper, and its posses¬ 
sions devolved upon the collateral Styrian 
line in 1457; since which time the house of 
Austria furnished an unbroken succession of 
German emperors. 


316 


AUSTRIA. 


In 1453 the Emperor Frederick III., a 
member of this house, had conferred upon 
the country the rank of an archduchy be¬ 
fore he himself became ruler of all Austria. 
His son Maximilian I., by his marriage with 
Mary, the surviving daughter of Charles 
the Bold, united the Netherlands to the 
Austrian dominions. After the death of 
his father in 1493 Maximilian was made 
Emperor of Germany, and transferred to his 
son Philip the government of the Nether¬ 
lands. He also added to his paternal in¬ 
heritance Tyrol, with several other terri¬ 
tories, particularly some belonging to Ba¬ 
varia, and acquired for his family new claims 
to Hungary and Bohemia. The marriage 
of his son Philip to Joanna of Spain raised 
the house of Hapsburg to the throne of 
Spain. Philip, however, died in 1506, and 
the death of Maximilian in 1519 was fol¬ 
lowed by the union of Spain and Austria; 
his grandson (the eldest son of Philip), 
Charles I., king of Spain, being elected 
Emperor of Germany as Charles V. Charles 
thus became the greatest monarch in Europe, 
but in 1521 he ceded to his brother Ferdi¬ 
nand all his dominions in Germany. Ferdi¬ 
nand I., byhis marriage with Anna, the sister 
of Louis II., king of Hungary, acquired the 
kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, with 
Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, the appen¬ 
dages of Bohemia. To oppose him the way- 
wode of Transylvania, John Zapolya, sought 
the help of the sultan, Soliman II., who ap¬ 
peared in 1529 at the gates of Vienna, but 
w r as compelled to retreat. In 1535 a treaty 
was made by which John von Zapolya was 
allowed to retain the royal title and half of 
Hungary, but after his death new disputes 
arose, and Ferdinand maintained the pos¬ 
session of Lower Hungary only by paying 
Soliman the sum of 30,000 ducats annually 
(1562). In 1556 Ferdinand obtained the 
imperial crown, when his brother Chai'les 
laid by the sceptre for a cowl. He died in 
1564, leaving his territories to be divided 
amongst his thrte sons. 

Maximilian II., the eldest, succeeded his 
father as emperor, obtaining Austria, Hun¬ 
gary, and Bohemia; Ferdinand, the second 
son, received Tyrol and Hither Austria; 
and Charles, the youngest, obtained Styria, 
Carinthia, Carniola, and Gorz. Maximi¬ 
lian died in 1576, and was succeeded in 
the imperial throne by his eldest son 
Rudolph II., who had already been crowned 
King of Hungary in 1572, and King of 
Bohemia, in 1575. Rudolph’s reign was 

317 


distinguished by the war against Turkey 
and Transylvania; the persecutions of 
the Protestants, who were driven fronr 
his dominions, the cession of Hungary in 
1608; and in 1611 of Bohemia and his 
hereditary estates in Austria to his bro¬ 
ther Matthias. Matthias, who succeeded 
Maximilian on the imperial throne, con¬ 
cluded a peace with the Turks, but was dis¬ 
turbed by the Protestant Bohemians, who 
took up arms in defence of their religious 
rights, thus commencing the Thirty Years’ 
War. After his death in 1619 the Bohe¬ 
mians refused to acknowledge his successor, 
FerdinandlL, until after the battle of Prague 
in 1620, when Bohemia had to submit, and 
was deprived of the right of choosing her 
king. Lutheranism was strictly forbidden 
in all the Austrian dominions. Hungary, 
which revolted under Bethlem Gabor, prince 
of Transylvania, was, after a long struggle, 
subdued. During the reign of Ferdinand 
III. (1637-57), successor of Ferdinand II., 
Austria was continually the theatre of war; 
Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635; and 
Alsace to France in 1648, when peace was 
restored in Germany by the Treaty of 
Westphalia. 

The Emperor Leopold I., son and suc¬ 
cessor of Ferdinand III., was victorious 
through the talents of Eugene in two wars 
with Turkey ; and Vienna was delivered by 
Sobieski and the Germans from the attacks of 
Kara Mustapha in 1683. In 1687 he united 
Hungary to Transylvania, and in 1699 re¬ 
stored to Hungary the country lying between 
the Danube and the Theiss. It was the chief 
aim of Leopold to secure to Charles, his second 
son, the inheritance of the Spanish mon¬ 
archy, and in 1701, upon the victory of 
French diplomacy in the appointment of 
the grandson of Louis XIV., the war of the 
Spanish succession commenced. Leopold 
died in 1705, but Joseph I., his eldest son, 
continued the war. As he died without 
children in 1711, his brother Charles was 
elected emperor, but was obliged to accede 
in 1714 to the Peace of Utrecht, by which 
Austria received the Netherlands, Milan, 
Mantua, Naples, and Sardinia. In 1720 
Sicily was given to Austria in exchange for 
Sardinia. This monarchy now embraced 
over 190,000 square miles; but its power 
was weakened by new wars with Spain and 
France. In the peace concluded at Vienna 
(1735 and 1738) Charles VI. was forced to 
cede Naples and Sicily to Spain and part 
of Milan to the King of Sardinia; and in 


AUSTRIA. 


1739, by the Peace of Belgrade, he was 
obliged to transfer to the Porte Belgrade, 
Servia, &c., partly in order to secure the 
succession to his daughter Maria Theresa by 
the Pragmatic Sanction. He died in 1740. 

On the marriage of Maria Theresa with 
Stephen, duke of Lorraine (the dynasty 
henceforth being that of Hapsburg-Lor¬ 
raine), and her accession to the Austrian 
throne, the empire was threatened with dis¬ 
memberment. Frederick II. of Prussia sub¬ 
dued Silesia; the Elector of Bavaria was 
crowned in Lintz and Prague, and in 1742 
chosen emperor under the name of Charles 
VII.; Hungary alone supported the heroic 
and beautiful queen. Charles, however, 
died in 1745, and the husband of Theresa 
was crowned Emperor of Germany as 
Francis I.; but a treaty concluded in 
1745 confirmed to Frederick the possession 
of Silesia, and by the Peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle, 1748, Austria was-obliged to cede 
the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guas- 
talla to Philip, Infant of Spain, and several 
districts of Milan to Sardinia. To recover 
Silesia Maria Theresa formed an alliance 
with France, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, 
and entered upon the Seven Years’ War; 
but by the Peace of Hubertsberg, 1763, 
Silesia was recognized as Prussian territory. 
On the death of Francis I. in 1765 Joseph II., 
his eldest son, was appointed to assist his 
mother in the government and elected Em¬ 
peror of Germany. The partition of Poland 
(1772) gave Galicia and Lodomeria to Aus¬ 
tria, which also obtained Bukowina from the 
Porte in 1777. At the death of the empress 
in 1780 Austria contained 235,000 square 
miles, with a pop. estimated at 24,000,000. 

The liberal home administration of the 
empress was continued and extended by 
her successor, Joseph II., who did much to 
further the spread of religious tolerance, 
education, and the industrial arts. The 
Low Countries, however, revolted, and he 
was unsuccessful in the war of 1788 against 
the Porte. His death took place in 1790. 
He was succeeded by his eldest brother, 
Leopold II., under whom peace was restored 
in the Netherlands, and in Hungary, and 
also with the Porte. On the death of his 
sister and her husband Louis XVI. of 
France he formed an alliance with Prussia, 
but died in 1792, before the French revolu¬ 
tionary war broke out. 

His son, Francis II., succeeded, and was 
elected German emperor, by which time 
France had declared war against him as King 


of Hungary and Bohemia. In 1795, in the 
third division of Poland, West Galicia fell to 
Austria, and by the Peace of Campo-Formio 
(1797) she received the largest part of the 
Venetian territory as compensation for her 
loss of Lombardy and the Netherlands. In 
1799 Francis, in alliance with Russia, re¬ 
newed the war with France until 1801, when 
the Peace of Lun^ville was concluded. In 
1804 Francis declared himself hereditary 
Emperor of Austria as Francis I., and united 
all his states under the name of the Empire 
of Austria, immediately taking up arms once 
more with his allies Russia and Great 
Britain against France. The war of 1805 
was terminated by the Peace of Pressburg 
(Dec. 26), by which Francis had to cede to 
France the remaining provinces of Italy, as 
well as to give up portions of territory to 
Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden, receiv¬ 
ing in return Salzburg and Berchtesgaden. 
After the formation of the Confederation of 
the Rhine (July 12,1806) Francis was forced 
to resign his dignity as Emperor of Ger¬ 
many, which had been in his family more 
than 500 years. A new w r ar with France 
in 1809 cost the monarchy 42,380 square 
miles of territory and 3,500,000 subjects. 
Napoleon married Maria Louisa, daughter 
of the emperor, and in 1812 concluded an 
alliance with him against Russia. But in 
1813 Francis again declared war against 
France, and formed an alliance with Britain, 
Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against his 
son-in-law. By the Congress of Vienna 
(1815) Austria gained Lombardy and Vene- 
tia, and recovered, together with Dalmatia, 
the hereditary territories which it had been 
obliged to cede. 

In the troubled period following the 
French revolution of 1830 insurrections 
took place in Modena, Parma, and the Papal 
States (1831-32), but were suppressed with¬ 
out much difficulty; and though professedly 
neutral during the Polish insurrections Aus¬ 
tria clearly showed herself on the side of 
Russia, with whom her relations became more 
intimate as those between Great Britain and 
France grew more cordial. The death of 
Francis I. (1835) and accession of his son 
Ferdinand I. made little change in the Aus¬ 
trian system of government, and much dis¬ 
content was the consequence. In 1846 the 
failure of the Polish insurrection led to the 
incorporation of Cracow with Austria. In 
Italy the declarations of Pio Nono in favour 
of reform increased the difficulties of Aus¬ 
tria, and in Hungary the opposition under 

318 


AUSTRIA 


AUTOMATON. 


Kossuth and others assumed the form of a 
great constitutional movement. In 1848, 
when the expulsion of Louis Philippe shook 
all Europe, Metternich found it impossible 
any longer to guide the helm of the state, 
and the government was compelled to admit 
a free press and the right of citizens to arms. 
Apart from the popular attitude in Italy and 
in Hungary, where the diet declared itself 
permanent under the presidency of Kossuth, 
the insurrection made equal progress in 
Vienna itself, and the royal family, no longer 
in safety, removed to Innsbruck. After 
various ministerial changes the emperor 
abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis 
Joseph ; more vigorous measures were 
adopted; and Austria, aided by Russia, re¬ 
duced Hungary to submission. 

The year 1855 is memorable for the Con¬ 
cordat with the pope, which put the educa¬ 
tional and ecclesiastical affairs of the empire 
entirely into the hands of the Papal see. In 
1859 the hostile intentions of France and 
Sardinia against the possessions of Austria 
in Italy became so evident that she declared 
war by sending an army across the Ticino; 
but after disastrous defeats at Magenta and 
Solferino she was compelled to cede Milan 
and the north-west portion of Lombardy to 
Sardinia. In 1864 she joined with the Ger¬ 
man states in the spoliation of Denmark, 
but a dispute about Schleswig-Holstein 
involved her in a war with her allies (1866), 
while at the same time Italy renewed her 
attempts for the recovery of Venice. The 
Italians were defeated at Custozza and 
driven back across the Mincio; but the 
Prussians, victorious at Koniggratz (or Sa- 
dowa), threatened Vienna. Peace was con¬ 
cluded with Prussia on Aug. 23 and with 
Italy on Oct. 3, the result of the war 
being the cession of Venetia through France 
to Italy and the withdrawal of Austria 
from all interference in the affairs of Ger¬ 
many. 

Since 1866 Austria has been occupied 
chiefly with the internal affairs of the em¬ 
pire. Hungarian demands for self-govern¬ 
ment were finally agreed to, and the Empire 
of Austria divided into the two parts al¬ 
ready mentioned-the Cisleithan and the 
Transleithan. This settlement was consum¬ 
mated by the coronation of the Emperor 
Francis Joseph I., at Budapest, as King of 
Hungary, on the 8th of June, 1867. In the 
same year the Concordat of 1855 came up for 
discussion, and measures were passed for the 
re-establishment of civil marriage, the eman¬ 

319 


cipation of schools from the domination of 
the church, and the placing of different 
creeds on a footing of equality. The fact of 
the Austro-Hungarian dominions comprising 
so many different nationalities has always 
given the central government much trouble, 
both in regard to internal and to external 
affairs. In regard to the ‘ Eastern Question,’ 
for instance, the action of Austria has been 
hampered by the sympathies shown by the 
Magyars for their blood relations, the Turks, 
while the Slavs have naturally been more 
favourable to Russia. During the war be¬ 
tween Russia and Turkey in 1877-78 Aus¬ 
tria remained neutral; but at its close, in the 
middle of 1878, it was decided, at the Con¬ 
gress of Berlin, that the provinces of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina should in future be ad¬ 
ministered by Austria-Hungary instead of 
Turkey. Recently there has been a likeli¬ 
hood of Austria being involved in hostilities 
with Russia in connection with the ‘Eastern 
Question;’ and in Feb. 1888 a treaty between 
Austria and Germany was published, by 
which each agreed to assist the other in the 
case of an attack by Russia. 

Auteuil (o-te-ye), formerly a suburban 
village of Paris, but now inclosed within the 
fortifications. 

Autochthones (a-tok'tho-nez), the Greek 
name for the aboriginal inhabitants of a 
country. 

Au'tocrat (Gr. autos, self, Tcratos, rule), 
an absolute or uncontrolled ruler; the head 
of a state who is not controlled by any con¬ 
stitutional limitations; such as the Emperor 
of Russia. 

Auto de fe (Spanish); Auto da Fe (Por¬ 
tuguese), lit. * act of faith.’ See Inquisition. 

Au'tograph, a person’s own handwriting; 
an original manuscript or signature, as op¬ 
posed to a copy. The practice of collecting 
autographs or signatures dates at least from 
the sixteenth century, among the earliest 
collections known being those of Lomenie 
de Brienne and Lacroix du Maine. 

Autom'atism, the confinement of activity 
in men or animals within a purely mechani¬ 
cal limit, resulting from injury to or partial 
removal of the brain. 

Automaton (Greek automatos, spontane¬ 
ous), a self-moving machine performing ac¬ 
tions like those of a living being, and often 
shaped like one. The walking statues of 
Daedalus, the flying dove of Archytas, the 
brazen head of Friar Bacon, the iron fly of 
Regiomontanus, the door-opening figure of 
Albertus Magnus, the parading knights of 


AUTOMOLITE-AVALON. 


the clock presented to Charlemagne by 
Harun al Rashid, the toy carriage and 
attendants constructed by Camus for Louis 
XIV., the flute-player, tambour-player, and 
duck of Vaucanson, and the writing child 
of the brothers Droz are among the more 
noteworthy of traditional automata. 

Autom'olite. See Gahnite. 

Autonomy, the power of a state, institu¬ 
tion, &c., to legislate for itself. 

Autoph'agi (*ji), birds which feed them¬ 
selves as soon as hatched. 

Au'toplasty, the operation by which 
wounds and diseased parts are repaired 
with healthy tissue taken from other parts 
of the same person's body. 

Autop'sy, literally, personal observation 
or inspection, commonly restricted to post¬ 
mortem examination. 

Au'totype, a species of photographic 
print. A thin sheet of gelatine on paper is 
rendered sensitive to light by treatment with 
bichromate of potash, and then exposed un¬ 
der an ordinary photographic negative. The 
portions of gelatine affected by the light 
become insoluble, the remainder of the gela¬ 
tine is then washed away, and the picture 
remains reproduced in the gelatine, there 
being,slight elevations and depressions cor¬ 
responding with the distribution of light and 
shade. This may be printed from, but it is 
more often made use of to obtain electro¬ 
types or other reverses, from which impres¬ 
sions can more easily be taken. 

Autumn, the season between summer and 
winter, in the northern hemisphere often 
regarded as embracing August, September, 
and October, or three months about that 
time. The beginning of the astronomical 
autumn is September 22, the autumnal 
equinox; and the end is December 21, the 
shortest day. The autumn of the southern 
hemisphere takes place at the time of the 
northern spring. 

Autun (o-tun; ancient Bibracte, later 
Augustodunum), a town, South-eastern 
France, department of Saoim-et-Loire. It 
has two Roman gates of exquisite work¬ 
manship, the ruins of an amphitheatre and 
of several temples, the cathedral of St. 
Lazare, a fine Gothic structure of the 
eleventh century; manufactures of carpets, 
woollens, cotton, velvet, hosiery, &c. Pop. 
11,462. 

Auvergne (o-var-nye), a province, Central 
France, now merged into departments Can- 
tal and Puy-de-Dome, and an arrondisse- 
ment of Haute-Loire. The Auvergne 


Mountains, separating the basins of the 
Allier, Cher, and Creuse from those of the 
Lot and Dordogne, contain the highest 
points of Central France: Mount Dor, 6188 
feet; Cantal, 6093 feet, and Puy-de-Dome, 
4806 feet. The number of extinct volcanoes 
and general geologic formation make the 
district one of great scientific interest. The 
minerals include iron, coal, copper, and lead, 
and there are warm and cold mineral springs. 
Auvergne contributes a large supply to the 
labour markets of Paris and Belgium, there 
being in Paris alone some 50,000 Auver- 
gnats. 

Auxerre (o-sar), a town, France, depart¬ 
ment of Yonne, 110 miles s.E. of Paris. 
Principal edifices: a fine Gothic cathedral, 
unfinished; the abbey of St. Germain, with 
curious crypts; and an old episcopal palace, 
now the Hotel de Prefecture; it manufac¬ 
tures woollens, hats, casks, leather, earthen 
ware, violin strings, &c.; trade, chiefly in 
wood and wines, of which the best known is 
white Chablis. Pop. 15,497. 

Auxom'eter, an instrument to measure 
the magnifying powers of an optical ap¬ 
paratus. 

Auxonne (o-son; anc. Aussona), a town, 
France, department of Cote-d’Or (Bur¬ 
gundy), on the Saone; a fortified place, 
with some manufactures. Pop. 5911. 

A'va, a town in Asia, formerly the capital 
of Burmah, on the Irrawady, now almost 
wholly in ruins. 

Ava-Ava, Arva, Kava, or Yava ( Macro¬ 
piper methysticum), a plant of the nat. order 
Piperaceae (pepper family), so called by the 
inhabitants of Polynesia, who make an in¬ 
toxicating drink out of it. Its leaves are 
chewed with betel in South-eastern Asia. 

Avad'avat. Same as Amadavat. 

Av'alanches, large masses of snow or ice 
precipitated from the mountains, and dis¬ 
tinguished as wind or dust avalanches, when 
they consist of fresh-fallen snow whirled 
like a dust storm into the valleys; as slid¬ 
ing avalanches , when they consist of great 
masses of snow sliding down a slope by their 
own \veight; and as glacier or summer ava¬ 
lanches , when ice-masses are detached by 
heat from the high glaciers. 

Aval Islands. Same as Bahrein Islands. 

Avallon (a-va-lon), a town of Central 
France, dep. Yonne. Pop. 5597. 

Av'alon, a sort of fairy land or elysium 
mentioned in connection with the legends of 
King Arthur, being his abode after disap¬ 
pearing from the haunts of men : called also 

320 



AVANTURINE 

Avilion. The name is also identified with 
Glastonbury; and has been given to a penin¬ 
sula of Newfoundland. 

Avan'turine, Aven'turine, a variety of 
quartz containing glittering spangles of mica 
through it; also a sort of artificial gem of 
similar appearance. 

Av'ars, a nation, probably of Turanian 
origin, who at an early period may have 
migrated from the region east of the Tobol in 
Siberia to that about the Don, the Caspian 
Sea, and the Volga. A part advanced to 
the Danube in 555 a.d., and settled in Dacia. 
They served in Justinian’s army, aided the 
Lombards in destroying the kingdom of 
the Gepidae, and in the sixth century con¬ 
quered under their khan Bajan the region 
of Pannonia. They then won Dalmatia, 
pressed into Thuringia and Italy against 
the Franks and Lombards, and subdued 
the Slavs dwelling on the Danube, as well 
as the Bulgarians on the Black Sea. But 
they were ultimately limited to Pannonia, 
where they were overcome by Charlemagne, 
and nearly extirpated by the Slavs of Mo¬ 
ravia. After 827 they disappear from his¬ 
tory. Traces of their fortified settlements 
are found, and known as Avarian rings. 

Avatar', more properly Avatara, in 
Hindu mythology, an incarnation of the 
Deity. Of the innumerable avatars the 
chief are the ten incarnations of Vishnu, 
who appeared successively as a fish, a tor¬ 
toise, a boar, &c. 

Avatch'a, a volcano and bay in Kam- 
tchatka. The volcano, which is 9000 ft. high, 
was last active in 1855. The town of Petro- 
pavlovsk lies in the bay. 

Avebury (av'be-ri), a village of England, 
in Wiltshire, occupying the site of a so-called 
Druidical temple, which originally consisted 
of a large outer circle of 100 stones, from 
15 to 17 feet in height, and about 40 feet 
in circumference, surrounded by a broad 
ditch and lofty rampart, and inclosing two 
smaller circles. Few traces now remain of 
the structure. On the neighbouring downs 
are numerous barrows or tumuli, one of 
which, called Silbury Hill, rises to the height 
of 130 feet, with a circumference of 2027 
feet at the base, covering an area of more 
than 5 acres. 

Aveiro (a-va'i-ru), a coast town in Por¬ 
tugal, province of Douro, with a cathedral, 
an active fishery, and a thriving trade. Pop. 
6557. 

Avellino (a-vel-le'no), a town in Southern 
Italy, capital of the province of Avellino, 
VOL. I. 321 


— AVERROES. 

29 m. east of Naples, the seat of a bishop. 
Avellino nuts were celebrated under the 
Romans. Pop. 16,376. Area of the prov. 
1409; pop. 419,688. 

A've Mari'a (‘ Hail, Mary’), the first two 
words of the angel Gabriel’s salutation 
(Luke i. 28), and the beginning of the very 
common Latin prayer to the Virgin in the 
Roman Catholic Church. Its lay use was 
sanctioned at the end of the twelfth century, 
and a papal edict of 1326 ordains the repeti¬ 
tion of the prayer thrice each morning, noon, 
and evening, the hour being indicated by 
sound of bells called the Ave Maria or An- 
gelus Domini. The prayers are counted 
upon the small beads of the rosary, as the 
Paternosters are upon the large ones. 

Ave'na, the oat genus of plants. See Oat. 

Av'ens, a European plant, of the genus 
Geum. Common avens, or herb-bennet, G. 
urbanum, possesses astringent properties. 
The American species, G. rivale, has the 
same properties; it is a fine plant. 

Av'entaile, the movable face-guard of the 
helmet, through which the warrior breathed. 

Aven'turine. See Avanturine. 

Av'erage, in maritime law, any charge or 
expense over and above the freight of goods, 
and payable by their owner.— General aver¬ 
age is the sum falling to be paid by the 
owners of ship, cargo, and freight, in propor¬ 
tion to their several interests, to make good 
any loss or expense intentionally incurred 
for the general safety of ship and cargo, e.g. 
throwing goods overboard, cutting away 
masts, port dues in cases of distress, &c.— 
Pckrticular average is the sum falling to be 
paid for unavoidable loss when the general 
safety is not in question, and therefore 
chargeable on the individual owner of the 
property lost. A policy of insurance gene¬ 
rally covers both general and particular 
average, unless specially excepted. 

Aver'nus, a lake, now called Lago 
d'Averno, in Campania, Italy, between the 
ancient Cumae and Puteoli, about 8 m. 
from Naples. It occupies the crater of an 
old volcano, and is in some places 180 feet 
deep. Formerly the gloom of its forest 
surroundings and its mephitic exhalations 
caused it to be regarded as the entrance to 
the infernal regions. It was the fabled 
abode of the Cimmerians, and especially 
dedicated to Proserpine. 

Averroes (a-ver'o-es; corrupted from 
Ibn Roshd ), the most renowned Arabian 
philosopher, born at Cordova, in Spain, 
probably between 1120 and 1149. His 

21 



AVERRUNCATOR 


AVIGNON. 


ability procured him the succession to his 
father’s office of chief magistrate, and the 
King of Marocco appointed him at the 
same time cadi in the province of Maure¬ 
tania. Accused of being an infidel, he was, 
however, deprived of his offices, and banished 
to Spain; but, being persecuted there also, 
he fled to Fez, where he was condemned to 
recant and undergo public penance. Upon 
this he went back to his own country, where 
the Caliph Almansur finally restored him 
to his dignities. He died at Marocco, the 
year of his death being variously given as 
1198, 1206, 1217, and 1225. Averroes re¬ 
garded Aristotle as the greatest of all philo¬ 
sophers, and devoted himself so largely to 
the exposition of his works as to be called 
among the Arabians The Interpreter. He 
wrote a compendium of medicine, and trea¬ 
tises in theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, 
&c. His commentaries upon Aristotle ap¬ 
peared before 1250 in a Latin translation 
attributed to Michael Scott and others. 

Averrunca'tor, a garden implement for 
pruning trees without a ladder, consisting 
of two blades similar to stout shears, one 
fixed rigidly to a long handle, and the other 
moved by a lever to which a cord passing 
over a pulley is attached. 

Aver'sa, a well-built town of Southern 
Italy, 7 miles N. of Naples, in a beautiful 
vine and orange district, the seat of a bishop, 
with a cathedral and various religious insti¬ 
tutions, and an excellently-conducted luna¬ 
tic asylum. Andreas of Hungary, husband 
of Queen Joanna I., was strangled in a con¬ 
vent here, Sept. 18, 1345. Pop. 21,473. 

Avesnes (a-van), a town of France, dep. 
Nord. Pop. 5468. 

Avesta. See Zendavesta. 

Aveyron (a-va-ron), a department occu¬ 
pying the southern extremity of the central 
plateau of France, traversed by mountains 
belonging to the Cevennes and the Cantal 
ranges; principal rivers: Aveyron, Lot, and 
Tarn, the Lot alone being navigable. The 
climate is cold, and agriculture is in a 
backward state, but considerable attention 
is paid to sheep-breeding. It is noted for 
its ‘Roquefort cheese.’ It has coal, iron, 
and copper mines, besides other minerals. 
Area, 3340 sq. miles; capital, Rhodez. Pop. 
415,826. 

Avezzano (a-vet-za'no), a town of S. Italy, 
prov. Aquila. Pop. 6375. 

Av'iary, a building or inclosure for keep¬ 
ing, breeding, and rearing birds. Aviaries 
appear to have been used by the Persians, 


Greeks, and Romans, and are highly prized 
in China. In England they were in use at 
least as early as 1577, when William Harri- 
sonrefers to ‘ourcostlie and curious aviaries.’ 
An aviary may be simply a kind of very 
large cage; but the term usually has a 
wider scope than this. 

Avicen'na, or Ebn-Sina, an Arabian 
philosopher and physician, born near Bok¬ 
hara, a.d. 980. After practising as a phy¬ 
sician he quitted Bokhara at the age of 22, 
and for a number of years led a wandering 
life, settling at last at Hamadan, latterly as 
vizier of the emir. On the death of his 
patron he lived in retirement at Hamadan, 
but having secretly offered his services to 
the Sultan of Ispahan he was imprisoned 
by the new emir. Escaping, he fled to 
Ispahan, was received with great honour by 
the sultan, and passed there in quietness 
the last fourteen years of his life, writing 
upon medicine, logic, metaphysics, astron¬ 
omy, and geometry. He died in 1037, 
leaving many writings, mostly commentaries 
on Aristotle. Of his 100 treatises the best 
known is the Canon Medicinae, which was 
still in use as a text-book at Louvain and 
Montpellier in the middle of the seven¬ 
teenth century. 

Avie'nus, Rufus Festus, a Latin descrip¬ 
tive poet, who flourished about the end of 
the fourth century after Christ, and wrote 
Descriptio Orbis Terrae, a general descrip¬ 
tion of the earth; Ora Maritima, an account 
of the Mediterranean coasts, &c. 

Avifau'na, a collective term for the birds 
of any region. 

Avigliano (a-vel-ya'no), a town of S. Italy, 
prov. Potenza. Pop. 13,057. 

Avignon (a-ve-nyon; ancient, Avenio), an 
old town of S.E. France, capital of depart¬ 
ment Vaucluse, on the left bank of the 
Rhone; inclosed by lofty battlemented and 
turreted walls, well built, but with rather 
narrow streets. It is an archbishop’s see, 
and has a large and ancient cathedral on 
a rock overlooking the town, the immense 
palace in which the popes resided (now bar¬ 
racks), and other old buildings. The indus¬ 
tries of the city are numerous and varied, 
the principal being connected with silk. 
The silk manufacture and the rearing of 
sillc-worms are the principal employments 
in the district. Here Petrarch lived several 
years, and made the acquaintance of Laura, 
whose tomb is in the Franciscan church. 
From 1309 to 1376 seven popes in succes¬ 
sion, from Clement Y. to Gregory XI., re- 

322 



AVIGrNON BERRIES-AXE; 


sided in this city. After its purchase by 
Pope Clement VI. in 1348 Avignon and its 
district continued, with a few interruptions, 
under the rule of a vice-legate of the pope’s 
till 1791, when it was formally united to the 
French Republic. Pop. 41,007. 

Avignon Berries. See French Berries. 

Avila (a've-la), town of Spain, capital of 
province of Avila, a modern division of Old 
Castile. See of Bishop suffragan of Santi¬ 
ago, with fine cathedral. Once one of the 
richest towns of Spain. Principal employ¬ 
ment in the town, spinning; in the province, 
breeding sheep and cattle. Pop., town, 
9199; province, 187,211. 

Avila, Gil Gonzalez d’, a Spanish anti¬ 
quary and biographer, 1577-1658; made 
historiographer of Castile in 1612, and of 
the Indies in 1641. Most valuable works: 
Teatro de las Grandezas de Madrid, 1623, 
and Teatro Ecclesiastico, 1645-53. 

Avila y Zuniga (a've-la e tho-nye'ga), 
Don Luis d’, Spanish general, diplomatist, 
and historian; a favourite of Charles V.; 
born about 1490, died after 1552. His chief 
work, translated into five or six languages, 
was on the war of Charles V. in Germany. 

Aviles (a-ve'les), a town of Northern 
Spain, prov. Oviedo, with a good harbour. 
Pop. 9000. 

Aviz, an order of knighthood in Portugal, 
instituted by Sancho, its first king, and 
having as its original object the subjection 
of the Moors. 

Avizandum, in Scots law, private con¬ 
sideration. To make avizandum is to 
remove a cause from the public court to the 
private consideration of the judge. 

Avlo'na, a seaport of Turkish Albania on 
the Adriatic, with a considerable trade. 
Pop. 5000. 

Avoca'do-pear. See Alligator-'pear. 

Av'ocet. See Avoset. 

Avogad'ro’s Law, in physics, asserts that 
equal volumes of different gases at the 
same pressure and temperature contain an 
equal number of molecules. 

Avoirdupois (a-ver'du pois; from old 
French, lit. ‘goods of weight’), a system of 
weights used for all goods except precious 
metals, gems, and medicines, and in which 
a pound contains 16 ounces, or 7000 grains, 
while a pound troy contains 12 ounces, or 
5760 grains. A hundredweight contains 
112 pounds avoirdupois; a cental of 100 
pounds is common in America, and is a legal 
British weight. 

Av'ola, a seaport on the east of Sicily, 
« 323 


with a trade in almonds, sugar, &c. Pop. 
12,540. 

A'von, the name of several rivers in Eng¬ 
land, of which the principal are: (1.) The 
Upper Avon, rising in Leicestershire, and 
flowing s.w. into the Severn at Tewkesbury. 
Stratford-on-Avon lies on this river; (2.) 
The Lower Avon, rising in Gloucestershire, 
and falling into the Severn N.w. of Bristol; 
navigable as far as Bath; (3.) In Mon¬ 
mouthshire; (4.) In Wiltshire and Hamp¬ 
shire, entering the English Channel at 
Christchurch Bay. There are also streams 
of this name in Wales and Scotland. 

Av'oset, a bird about the size of a lapwing, 
of the genus Recurvirostra (R. avosetta), 
family Scolopacidae (snipes), order Gralla- 
tores. The bill is long, slender, elastic, and 



Avoset (Recurvirostra avosetta). 


bent upward toward the tip, the legs long, 
the feet webbed, and the plumage variegated 
with black and white. The bird feeds on 
worms and other small animals, which it 
scoops up from the mud of the marshes and 
fens that it frequents. It is found in Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and America; but the American 
species is slightly different from the other. 

Avranches (a vransh; anc. Abrincce ), a 
town, France, department La Manche, 
about 3 miles from the Atlantic. It for¬ 
merly had a fine cathedral. Manufactures: 
lace, thread, and candles. Pop. 8642. 

Awe (a), a Scottish lake in Argyleshire, 
about 28 miles long by 2 broad, and com¬ 
municating by the Awe with Loch Etive. 
Ben Cruachan stands at its northern extre¬ 
mity. It has manv islands and beautiful 
scenery, and abounds in trout, salmon, &c. 

Axe (or Ax), a well-known tool for cut¬ 
ting or chipping wood, consisting of an iron 
head with an arched cutting edge of steel, 
which is in line with the wooden handle of 
the tool, and not at right angles to it as iik 
the adze. 








Axel — ayamontE. 


Axei. See Absalom,. 

Axe-stone, a mineral, a variety of neph¬ 
rite or jade, used by the natives of New 
Zealand and South Pacific Islands for axes, 
&c. See Jade. 

Axholme Isle (aks'om), a sort of island in 
England formed by the rivers Trent, Idle, 
and Don, in the north¬ 
west angle of Lincoln¬ 
shire, 17 miles long, 41? 
broad. 

Axil, Axilla, in bot¬ 
any, the angle between 
the upper side of a leaf 
and the stem or branch 
from which it springs. 

Buds usually appear in the axils, and flowers 
or flower-stalks growing in this way are 
>called axillary. 

Ax'im, a town of W. Africa, on the Gold 
'Coast. 

Ax'inite, a mineral, a silicate of alumina, 
lime, &c., with boracic acid, deriving its 
name from the form of the crystals, the 
edges of which bear some resemblance to 
the edge of an axe. 



a a, Axils. 


Axin'omancy, an ancient method of divi¬ 
nation by the movements of an axe (Gr. 
axine) balanced on a stake, or of an agate 
placed on a red-hot axe. The names of 
suspected persons being uttered, the move¬ 
ments at a particular name indicated the 
criminal. 

Ax'iom, a universal proposition, which 
the understanding must perceive to be true 
as soon as it perceives the meaning of the 
words, and therefore called a self-evident 
truth: e.g. A is A. In mathematics, axioms 
are those propositions which are assumed 
without proof, as being in themselves inde¬ 
pendent of proof, and which are made the 
basis of all the subsequent reasoning; as, 
‘ The whole is greater than its part‘ Things 
that are equal to the same thing are equal 
to one another.’ 

Axis, the straight line, real or imaginary, 
passing through a body or magnitude, on 
which it revolves, or may be supposed to 
revolve; especially a straight line with re¬ 
gard to which the different parts of a mag¬ 
nitude, or several magnitudes, are symmetri¬ 
cally arranged; e.g. the axis of the world, 
the imaginary line drawn through its two 
poles. 

In botany the word is also used, the stem 
being termed the ascending axis , the root 
the descending axis. 

In anatomy the name is given to the 


second vertebra from the head, that on 
which the atlas moves. See Atlas. 

Axis (Cervus axis), a species of Indian 
deer, also known as the Spotted Hog-deer, 
of a rich fawn colour, nearly black along 
the back, with white spots, and under parts 
white. Breeds freely in many parks in 
Europe. 

Ax'minster, a market town, England, 
county Devon, on the Axe, at one time 
celebrated for its woollen cloth and carpet 
manufactures, and giving name to an expen¬ 
sive variety of carpet having a thick soft 
pile, and also to a cheaper variety. Pop. of 
town and parish, 2872. 

Ax'dotl ( Amblystoma maculatum), a curi¬ 
ous Mexican amphibian, not unlike a newt, 
from 8 to 10 inches in length, with gills 
formed of three long ramified or branch¬ 
like processes floating on each side of the 
neck. It reproduces by laying eggs, and 
was for some time regarded as a perfect 
animal with permanent gills. It is said, 
however, that they frequently lose their 
gills like the other members of the genus, 
though some authorities maintain that the 
true axolotl never loses its gills, and that 
merely confusion with A. tigrinum has led 
to the belief, as this species sometimes re¬ 
tains its branchiae, though usually it loses 
them. The axolotl is esteemed a luxury by 
the Mexicans. There are a number of 
species of Amblystoma in N. America. 

Ax'um, a town in Tigr£, a division of 
Abyssinia, once the capital of an important 
kingdom, and at one time the great depot of 
the ivory trade in the Bed Sea. The site of 
the town still exhibits many remains of its 
former greatness; but modern Axum is only 
a miserable village. 

Ayacucho (a-ya-ko'cho), the name of a 
department of Peru, and of its capital. The 
dep. has an area of 24,213 sq. miles; a pop. 
of 142,205. The town (formerly Guamanga 
or Huamanga) has a cathedral and a univer¬ 
sity, and a pop. of 9387. 

Ayala (a-ya'la), Pedko Lopez de, Spanish 
historian and poet, chancellor of Castile in 
the second half of the fourteenth century, 
and the author of a history of Castile 
during 1350-96. He took an active part in 
the struggle between Henry II. and Pedro 
the Cruel, and was taken prisoner by the 
English in 1367. During his English cap¬ 
tivity he wrote part of his chief poetical 
work, a Book in Bhyme concerning Court 
Life. Died, 1407. 

Ayamonte (a-ya-mon'ta), a seaport town, 

324 - 



AYASOLUK-AYRER. 


Spain, province of Huelva, 2 miles from the 
mouth of the Guadiana. Pop. 6000. 

Ayas'oluk, the modern representative of 
ancient Ephesus. 

Aye-aye (I-i; CheirSmys madagascari- 
ensis), an animal of Madagascar, so called 
from its cry, 
now referred 
to the lemur 
family. It is 
about the size 
of a hare, has 
large flat ears 
and a bushy 
tail; large eyes; 
long sprawling 
fingers, the 
third so slen¬ 
der as to ap- 
pearshri veiled; 
colour, musk- 
brown, mixed with black and gray ash; 
feeds on grubs, fruits, &c.; habits, nocturnal. 

Ayesha (a-yesh'a), daughter of Abu-Bekr 
and favourite wife of Mohammed, the 
Arabian prophet, though she bore him no 
child; born in 610 or 611. After his death 
she opposed the succession of Ali, but was 
defeated and taken prisoner. She died at 
Medina in 677 or 678 (a.h. 58). 

Aylesbury (alz'be-ri), county town of 
Buckinghamshire, England, with a fine old 
parish church; chief industries, silk-throwing, 
printing, making condensed milk, and poul¬ 
try-rearing for the London market. Previ¬ 
ous to 1885 it and its hundred sent two 
members to parliament, and it still gives 
name to a parliamentary division. Pop. 8674. 

Ay'loffe, Sir Joseph, an English anti¬ 
quary, born about 1708, died 1781; one of 
the first council of the Society of Anti¬ 
quaries, a commissioner for the preservation 
of state papers, and author and editor of 
several works, of which the best known is 
his Calendars of the Auntient Charters, &c. 

Aymaras (I'ma-raz), an Indian race of 
Bolivia and Peru, speaking a language akin 
to the Quichua. 

Ay'mon, the surname of four brothers, 
Alard, Richard, Guiscard, and Renaud, who 
hold a first place among the heroes of the 
Charlemagne cycle of romance. Their ex¬ 
ploits were the subject of a romance, Les 
Quatre Fils d’Aymon, by Huon de Ville- 
neuve, a trouvbre of the thirteenth century, 
and Renaud is a leading figure in Ariosto’s 
Orlando. 

Ayr dir), a town of Scotland, a royal and 

325 


pari, burgh, and capital of Ayrshire, at the 
mouth of the river Ayr, near the Firth of 
Clyde. It was the site of a Roman station. 
William the Lion built a castle here in 
1197 and constituted it a royal burgh in 
1202; and the parliament which continued 
Robert Bruce’s title to the crown sat in Ayr. 
It is picturesquely situated, and ranks among 
the better class of provincial towns. Two 
bridges connect Ayr proper with the sub¬ 
urbs of Newton and Wallacetown. One 
of the bridges, opened in 1879, occupies the 
place of the ‘New Brig’ of Burns's Brigs 
of Ayr, the 'Auld Brig’ (built 1252) being 
still serviceable for foot traffic. Carpets 
and lace curtains are manufactured. The 
harbour accommodation is good, and there 
is a considerable shipping trade, especially 
in coals. The house in which Burns was 
born stands within 1^ miles of the town, 
between it and the church of Alloway (‘Al- 
loway’s auld haunted kirk’), and a monu¬ 
ment to him stands on a height between the 
kirk and the bridge over the Doon. Pop. 
23,835. —The county has a length along the 
Firth of Clyde and North Channel of 80 
miles; area, 735,262 acres. It is divided 
into the districts of Carrick in the south, 
Kyle in the middle, and Cunningham in the 
north. The surface is irregular, and a large 
portion of it hilly, but much of it is fertile. 
The principal streams are the Ayr, Stinchar, 
Girvan, Doon, Irvine, and Garnock. Coal 
and iron are abundant; and there are numer¬ 
ous collieries and ironworks. Limestone 
and freestone abound. Agriculture is in an 
advanced state, the principal crops being 
oats, turnips, and potatoes, while dairy hus¬ 
bandry is extensively practised; the Ayr¬ 
shire cows are celebrated as milkers, and 
the Dunlop cheese has a good reputation. 
Woollen manufactures are extensive, par¬ 
ticularly carpets, bonnets, and worsted 
shawls, produced in great quantities at Kil¬ 
marnock and other places, and Ayrshire 
needlework and wooden snuff-boxes and 
similar articles are also much esteemed. 
Chief towns, Ayr, Kilmarnock, and Irvine. 
North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire each 
returns one member to parliament. Pop. 
1891, 224,222. 

Ayrer (i'rer), Jacob, a German dramatist 
of the sixteenth century, who almost rivalled 
Hans Sachs in copiousness and importance. 
He was a citizen and legal official of Nu¬ 
remberg, and died in 1605. His works, 
published at Nuremberg in 1618, under the 
title Opus Theatricum, include thirty come-. 



Aye-aye 

(ClieirOmys madaguscariensin ). 



AYTOUN 


AZERBIJAN. 


*fies and tragedies and thirty-six humorous 
pieces. 

Aytoun (a/tun), Sir Robert, poet, born 
in Fifeshire, Scotland, 1570, died 1638. 
After studying at St. Andrews he lived for 
some time in France, whence, in 1603, he 
addressed a panegyric in Latin verse to King 
James on his accession to the crown of Eng¬ 
land. By the grateful monarch he was ap¬ 
pointed one of the gentlemen of the bed¬ 
chamber, and private secretary to the queen, 
receiving also the honour of knighthood. 
At a later period of his life he was secre¬ 
tary to Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. 
His poems are few in number, but are dis¬ 
tinguished by elegance of diction. Several 
of his Latin poems are preserved in the work 
called Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum 

Aytoun, William Edmondstoune, poet 
and prose writer, born at Edinburgh in 1 Si3; 
died at Blackhills, Elgin, 1865. He studied 
at the University of Edinburgh, became a 
writer to the signet in 1835, and passed as 
advocate in 1840. He issued a volume of 
poems in 1832, by 1836 was a contributor 
to Blackwood’s Magazine, and he published 
the Life and Times of Richard I. in 1840. 
In 1848 he published a collection of ballads 
entitled Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, which 
has proved the most popular of all his works. 
It was followed in 18*4 by Firmilian, a 
Spasmodic Tragedy (intended to ridicule 
certain popular writers); the Bon Gaultier 
Ballads (parodies and other humorous pieces, 
in conjunction with Theodore Martin), 1855; 
in 1856 the poem Both well; and in sub¬ 
sequent years by Norman Sinclair, The 
Glenmutchkin Railway, and other stories. 
In 1858 he edited a critical and annotated 
collection of the Ballads of Scotland. A 
translation of the poems and ballads of 
Goethe was executed by him in conjunction 
with Theodore Martin. In 1845 he became 
professor of rhetoric and English literature 
in the University of Edinburgh—a position 
which he held till his death. In 1852 he 
was appointed Sheriff of Orkney and Shet¬ 
land. 

Ayuntamiento (a-yun-ta-me-en'to), the 
name given to the town and village councils 
in Spain and Spanish America. 

Ayu'thia, the ancient capital of Siam, on 
the Menam, now a scene of splendid ruin. 

Aza'lea, a genus of plants, nat. order 
Ericaceae, or heaths, remarkable for the 
beauty and fragrance of their flowers, and 
distinguished from the rhododendrons chiefly 
by the flowers having five stamens instead 


of ten. Many beautiful rhododendrons with 
deciduous leaves are known under the name 
of azalea in gardens. The azaleas are com¬ 
mon in North America, and two species of 



Azalea (Azalea indica). 


these— A. viscosa and A. nudijlora —are 
well known in Britain. An Asiatic species, 
A . pontica, famous for the stupefying effect 
which its honey is said to have produced on 
Xenophon’s army, is also common in British 
gardens and shrubberies; and another, A. 
indica , is a brilliant greenhouse plant. 

Azamgarh, a town of India, N.W. Pro¬ 
vinces, capital of dist. of same name. Pop. 
18,528.—The district has an area of 2147 
sq. miles; a pop. of 1,604,654. 

Azeglio (ad-zel'yo), Massimo Taparelli, 
Marquis d’, an Italian ‘admirable Crich¬ 
ton,’ artist, novelist, publicist, statesman, 
and soldier, born at Turin in 1798, died 
1866. After gaining some reputation in 
Rome as a painter, he married the daughter 
of Manzoni, and achieved success in litera¬ 
ture by his novels Ettore Fieramosco 
(1833) and Niccolo di Lapi (1841). These 
embodied much of the patriotic spirit, and 
in a short time he devoted himself ex¬ 
clusively to fostering the national sentiment 
by personal action and by his writings. 
Many of the reforms of Pius IX. were due 
to him. He commanded a legion in the 
Italian struggle of 1848, and was severely 
wounded at Vincenza. Chosen a member of 
the Sardinian Chamber of Deputies, he was, 
after the battle of Novara, made president 
of the cabinet, and in 1859 appointed to 
the military post of general and commis¬ 
sioner-extraordinary for the Roman States. 

Azerbijan (a-zer-bi-jan'), a province of 
North-western Persia; area, 40,000 sq. miles; 
pop. estimated at 2,000,000. It consists 
generally of lofty mountain ranges, some 

326 



AZIMGURH 


AZTECS. 


of which rise to a height of between 12,000 
and 13,000feet. Principal rivers: the Aras 
or Araxes, and the Kizil-Uzen, which enter 
the Caspian; smaller streams discharge 
themselves within the province into the 
great salt lake of Urumiyah. Agricultural 
products: wheat, barley, maize, fruit, cot¬ 
ton, tobacco, and grapes. Horses, cattle, 
sheep, and camels are reared in consider¬ 
able numbers. Chief minerals: iron, lead, 
copper, salt, saltpetre, and marble. Tabreez 
is the capital. 

Azimgurh. See Azamgcirh. 

Azimuth of a heavenly body, the arc of 
the horizon comprehended between the me¬ 
ridian of the observer and a vertical circle 
passing through the centre of the body. 
The azimuth and altitude give the exact 
position of the body. 

Azincourt. Same as Agincourt. 

A zof, or Azoph, a town in the Russian 
government of Ekaterinoslav, upon an island 
at the mouth of the Don, where it flows 
into the Sea of Azof; formerly a place of 
extensive trade, but its harbour has become 
almost sanded up. Pop. 16,791. 

Azof, Sea of (anc. Palus Mocotis), an arm 
of the Black Sea, with which it is united by 
the Straits of Kertch or Kaffa; length about 
170, breadth about 80 miles; greatest depth 
not more than 8 fathoms. The w. part, 
called the Putrid Sea, is separated from the 
main expanse by a long sandy belt called 
Arabat, along which runs a military road. 
The sea teems with fish. The Don and 
other rivers enter it, and its waters are very 
fresh. 

Azo'ic, ‘ without life,’ a term applied to 
rocks devoid of fossils. 

Azores (a-zorz' or a-zo'res), or Western 
Islands, a group belonging to and 900 miles 
west of Portugal, in the North Atlantic 
Ocean. They are nine in number, and form 
three distinct groups—a N.w., consisting of 
Flores and Corvo; a central, consisting of 
Terceira, Sao Jorge, Pico, Fayal, and Gra- 
ciosa; and a S.E., consisting of Sao Miguel 
(or St. Michael) and Santa Maria. The 
total area is about 900 sq. miles; Sao Miguel 
(containing the capital Ponta Delgada), 
Pico and Terceira are the largest. The 
islands, which are volcanic and subject to 
earth q u ak es, are apparen tly of com parati v ely 
recent origin, and are conical, lofty, precipi¬ 
tous, and picturesque. The most remarkable 
summit is the peak of Pico, about 7600 feet 
high. There are numerous hot springs. They 
are covered with luxuriant vegetation, and 

327 


diversified with woods, corn-fields, vineyards, 
lemon and orange groves, and rich open pas¬ 
tures. The mild and somewhat humid cli¬ 
mate, combined with the natural fertility of 
the soil, brings all kinds of vegetable pro¬ 
ducts rapidly to perfection, among the most 
important being grain, oranges, pine-apples, 
bananas, potatoes, yams, beans, coffee, and 
tobacco. The inhabitants are mainly of Por¬ 
tuguese descent, indolent and devoid of enter¬ 
prise. Principal exports: wine and brandv, 
oranges, maize, beans, pine-apples, cattle. 
The climate is recommended as suitable for 
consumptive patients. The Azores were 
discovered by Cabral about 1431, shortly 
after which date they were taken possession 
of and colonized by the Portuguese. When 
first visited they were uninhabited, and 
had scarcely any other animals except birds, 
particularly hawks, to which, called in Por¬ 
tuguese adores, the islands owe their name. 
Pop. 270,000. 

Az'ote, a name formerly given to nitrogen; 
hence substances containing nitrogen and 
forming part of the structure of plants and 
animals are known as azotized bodies. Such 
are albumen, fibrine, caseine, gelatine, urea, 
kreatine, &c. 

Azov. See Azof. 

Azpeitia (ath-pa'i-ti-a), a town of N.E. 
Spain, prov. Guipuzcoa. Near it is the 
convent of Loyola, a large edifice, now a 
museum. Pop. 6386. 

Az'rael, in Mohammedan mythology, the 
angel of death. 

Az'tecs, a race of people who settled in 
Mexico early in the fourteenth century, 
ultimately extended their dominion over a 
large territory, and were still extending their 
supremacy at the time of the arrival of 
the Spaniards, by whom they were speedily 
subjugated. Their political organization, 
termed by the Spanish writers an absolute 
monarchy, appears to have consisted of a 
military chief exercising important, but not 
unlimited power in civil affairs, in which the 
council of chiefs and periodic assemblies of 
the judges had also a voice. Their most 
celebrated ruler was Montezuma, who was 
reigning when the Spaniards arrived, about 
the middle of the fifteenth century. It is 
inferred that considerable numbers of them 
lived in large communal residences, and 
that land was held and cultivated upon 
the communal principle. Slavery and poly¬ 
gamy were both legitimate, but the chil¬ 
dren of slaves were regarded as free. Al¬ 
though ignorant of the horse, ox, &c., they 



AZTECS-BAALBEK. 


had a considerable knowledge of agricul¬ 
ture, maize and the agave being the chief 
produce. Silver, lead, tin, and copper 
were obtained from mines, and gold from 
the surface and river beds, but iron was un¬ 
known to them, their tools being of bronze 
and obsidian. In metal-work, feather-work, 
weaving, and pottery, they possessed a high 
degree of skill. To record events they used 
an unsolved hieroglyphic writing, and their 
lunar calendars were of unusual accuracy. 
Two special deities claimed their reverence: 
Hintzilopochtli, the god of war, propitiated 
with human sacrifices; and Quetzalcoatl, the 
beneficent god of light and air, with whom 
at first the Aztecs were disposed to identify 
Cortez. Their temples, with large terraced 
pyramidal bases, were in the charge of an 
exceedingly large priesthood, with whom 
lay the education of the young. As a civi¬ 


lization of apparently independent origin, 
yet closely resembling in many features the 
archaic oriental civilizations, the Aztec civi¬ 
lization is of the first interest, but in most 
accounts of it a large speculative element 
has to be discounted. 

Az'uline, Az'urine, blue dyes belonging 
to the coal-tar class. 

A zure, the heraldic term for the colour 
blue, represented in engraving by horizon¬ 
tal lines. 

Az'urine ( Leuciscus cceruleus), a fresh¬ 
water fish of the same genus as the roach, 
chub, and minnow, found in some parts of 
Europe, but rare in Britain; called also 
Blue Roach. 

Az'urite, a blue mineral, a carbonate of 
copper, occurring in crystals which are rather 
brittle; called also Blue Malachite. Also a 
name of lazulite. 


B. 


B is the second letter and the first conso¬ 
nant in the English and most other alpha¬ 
bets. It is a mute and labial, pronounced 
solely by the lips, and is distinguished from 
p by being sonant, that is, produced by the 
utterance of voice as distinguished from 
breath. 

B, in music, the seventh note of the model 
diatonic scale or scale of C. It is called the 
leading note, as there is always a feeling of 
suspense when it is sounded until the key¬ 
note is heard. 

Baader, Franz Xaver von (frants-za'fer 
fon ba'der), German philosopher, and the 
greatest speculative Roman Catholic theolo¬ 
gian of modern times; born in Munich, 1765, 
died 1841. He studied engineering, became 
superintendent of mines, and was ennobled 
for his services. He was deeply interested 
in the religious speculations of Eckhart, St. 
Martin, and Bohme, and in 1826 was ap- 
pointed professor of philosophy and specu¬ 
lative theology in the University of Munich. 
During the last three years of his life he 
was interdicted from lecturing for opposing 
the interference in civil matters of the 
Roman Catholic Church. 

Ba'al, Bel, a Hebrew and general Semitic 
word, which originally appears to have been 
generic, signifying simply lord, and to have 
been applied to many different divinities, or, 
with qualifying epithets, to the same divi¬ 
nity regarded in different aspects and as 


exercising different functions. Thus in Hos. 
ii. 16 it is applied to Jehovah himself, while 
Baal-berith (the Covenant-lord) was the god 
of the Shechemites, and Baal-zebub (the 
Fly-god) the idol of the Philistines at Ekron. 
Baal was the sacred title applied to the Sun 
as the principal male deity of the Phoeni¬ 
cians and their descendants the Carthari- 

o 

nians, as well as of the ancient Canaanitish 
nations, and was worshipped as the su¬ 
preme ruler and vivifier of nature. The word 
enters into the composition of many He¬ 
brew, Phoenician, and Carthaginian names 
of persons and places; thus, Jerubaal, Has- 
drubal (help of Baal), Hannibal (grace of 
Baal), and Baal-Hammon , Baal-Thamar, 
&c. 

Baalbek' (anc. Heliopolis, city of the 
sun), a place in Syria, in a fertile valley 
at the foot of Antilibanus, 40 miles from 
Damascus, famous for its magnificent ruins. 
Of these the chief is the temple of the 
Sun, built either by Antoninus Pius or by 
Septimius Severus. Some of the blocks 
used in its construction are 60 ft. long by 
12 thick; and its 54 columns, of which 6 are 
still standing, were 72 ft. high and 22 in cir¬ 
cumference. Near it is a temple of Jupiter, 
of smaller size though still larger than the 
Parthenon at Athens, and there are other 
structures of an elaborately ornate type. 
Originally a centre of the Sun-worship, it 
became a Roman colony under Julius Caesar, 

328 



BABISM. 


BAAL-ZEBUB 


was garrisoned by Augustus, and acquired 
increasing renown under Trajan as the seat 
of an oracle. Under Constantine its tem¬ 
ples became churches, but after being sacked 
by the Arabs in 748, and more completely 
pillaged by Tamerlane in 1401, it sank into 
hopeless decay. The work of destruction 
was completed by an earthquake in 1759. 

Baal-zebub. See Beelzebub. 

Baba, a cape near the north-west point 
of Asia Minor. 

Babadagh (ba-ba-dag'), a town of Rou- 
mania, capital of the Dobrudsha, carrying 
on a considerable Black Sea trade. Pop. 
10 , 000 . 

Bab'bage, Charles, the eminent English 
mathematician and inventor of the calculat¬ 
ing machine; born 1792, died 1871. He 
graduated at Cambridge in 1814, and occu¬ 
pied the Lucasian chair of mathematics at 
Cambridge for eleven years, but delivered 
no lectures. As early as 1812 he conceived 
the idea of calculating numerical tables by 
machinery, and in 1823 he received a grant 
from government for the construction of 
such a machine. After a series of experi¬ 
ments lasting eight years, and an expendi¬ 
ture of £17,000 (£6000 of which was sunk by 
himself, the balance voted by government), 
Babbage abandoned the undertaking in fa¬ 
vour of a much more enlarged work, an ana¬ 
lytical engine, worked with cards like the 
jacquard loom; but the project was never 
completed. The in completed machine is 
now in the South Kensington Museum. 
Among the many treatises he published on 
subjects connected with mathematics and 
mechanics few can be regarded as finished 
performances. 

Babbit-metal, a soft metal resulting from 
alloying together certain proportions of cop¬ 
per, tin, and zinc or antimony, used with 
the view of as far as possible obviating fric¬ 
tion in the bearings of journals, cranks, 
axles, &c., invented by Isaac Babbit (1799— 
1862), a goldsmith of Taunton, Massachu¬ 
setts. 

Ba'bel, the same as Babylon. 

Ba'bel, Tower of, according to the 11th 
chapter of Genesis, a structure in the Plain 
of Shinar, Mesopotamia, commenced by the 
descendants of Noah subsequent to the 
deluge, but which was not allowed to pro¬ 
ceed to completion. It has commonly been 
identified with the great temple of Belus or 
Bel that was one of the chief edifices in 
Babylon, and the huge mound called Birs 
Jlimrud is generally regarded as its site, 

329 


though another mound, which to this day 
bears the name of Babil, has been assigned 
by some as its site. Babel means literally 
‘gate of God.’ The meaning ‘confusion’ 
assigned to it in the Bible really belongs to 
a word of similar form. See Babylon. 

Bab-el-Mandeb (‘gate of tears,’ from 
being dangerous to small craft), a strait, 15 
miles wide, between the Indian Ocean and 
the Red Sea, formed by projecting points 
of Arabia in Asia, andAbyssinia in Africa. 
The island of Perim is here. 

Ba'ber, first Grand Mogul, the founder 
of the Mogul dynasty in Hindustan, born 
in 1483, died 1530. He was a grandson of 
the great Tartar prince Timur or Tamer¬ 
lane, and was sovereign of Cabul. He se¬ 
veral times invaded Hindustan, and in 1525 
finally overthrew and killed Sultan Ibrahim, 
the last Hindu emperor of the Patan or Af¬ 
ghan race. He made many improvements, 
social and political, in his empire, and left 
a valuable autobiography. 

Babeuf (ba-beuf), Francois Noel, a per¬ 
sonage connected with the French revolu¬ 
tion, born in 1764. He started a democra¬ 
tic journal at Paris, called Le Tribun du 
Peuple, par Gracchus Babeuf, and wrote 
with great severity against the Jacobins. 
After the fall of Robespierre, to which he 
powerfully contributed, he openly attacked 
the terrorists, and advocated the most de¬ 
mocratic principles. He was accused of a 
conspiracy against the directorial govern¬ 
ment, condemned to death, and guillotined 
in 1797. 

Bab'ington, Anthony, a Catholic gentle¬ 
man of Derbyshire, who associated with 
others of his own persuasion to assassinate 
Queen Elizabeth, and deliver Mary, queen 
of Scots. The plot being discovered the 
conspirators were executed in 1586. 

Babiroussa. See Babyroussa. 

Bab'ism, the doctrines of a Mohammedan 
sect whose head-quarters is Persia, founded 
by Seyd Mohammed Ali about 1843. He 
took the name of Bab-ed-din, ‘the gate of 
the faith,’ and afterwards that of Nokteh, 
‘the point,’ as not merely the recipient of 
a new divine revelation, but the focus in 
which all preceding dispensations would 
converge. One of his most successful dis¬ 
ciples was a highly-gifted woman, Gurred- 
ul-Ayn, ‘consolation of fhe eyes,’ who 
perished with many others during a perse¬ 
cution in 1852. The Bab himself had been 
executed about two years before this, and 
was succeeded by a noble youth, Mirza 



BABOO — 

Yahya. The sect holds that all individual ex¬ 
istence is an emanation from the supreme 
deity, by whom it will be ultimately re¬ 
absorbed. The morality of the sect is pure 
and cheerful, and it shows great advance¬ 
ment in the treatment of woman. Moses, 
Christ, and Mohammed are acknowledged 
as prophets, though only mere precursors of 
the Bab. 

Ba'boo, or Babu, a Hindu title of respect 
equivalent to sir or master, usually given 
to wealthy and educated native gentlemen, 
especially when of the mercantile class. 

Baboon', a common name applied to a 
division of old-world quadrumana (apes 
and monkeys), comprehending the genera 
Cynocephdlus and Papio. They have elon- 



Baboon (Cynocephdlus bahouin). 


gated abrupt muzzles like a dog, strong 
tusks or canine teeth, usually short tails, 
cheek-pouches, small deep eyes with large 
eyebrows, and naked callosities on the but¬ 
tocks. Their hind and fore feet are well 
proportioned, so that they run easily on all 
fours, but they do not maintain themselves 
in an upright posture with facility. They 
are generally of the size of a moderately 
large dog, but the largest, the mandrill, is, 
when erect, nearly of the height of a man. 
They are almost all African, ugly, sullen, 
fierce, lascivious, and gregarious, defending 
themselves by throwing stones, dirt, &c. 
They live on fruits and roots, eggs and in¬ 
sects. They include the chacma, drill, com¬ 
mon baboon, and mandrill. The chacma 
or pig-tailed baboon ( Cynocephdlus porca- 
rius) is found in considerable numbers in 


BABYLON. 

parts of the S. African colonies, where the 
inhabitants wage war against them on 
account of the ravages they commit in the 
fields and gardens. The common baboon 
(C. babouin) inhabits a large part of Africa 
farther to the north. It is of a brownish- 
yellow colour, while the chacma is grayish 
black, or in parts black. The hamadryas 
(C. hamadryas) of Abyssinia is character¬ 
ized by long hair, forming a sort of shoulder 
cape. The black baboon (C. niger) is found 
in Celebes. 

Babour (ba'bur). Same as Baber. 

Bab'rius, a Greek poet who flourished 
during the second or third century of the 
Christian era, and wrote a number of Aeso¬ 
pian fables. Several versions of these made 
during the middle ages have come down to 
us as AEsop’s fables. In 1840 a manuscript 
containing 120 fables by Babrius, previously 
unknown, was discovered on Mount Athos. 

Babuya'nes Islands, a group in the Pa¬ 
cific Ocean, between Luzon and Formosa, 
belonging to Spain. Pop. about 8000. 

Bab'ylon, the capital of Babylonia, on 
both sides of the Euphrates, one of the 
largest and most splendid cities of the 
ancient world, now a scene of ruins, and 
earth-mounds containing them. Babylon 
was a royal city sixteen hundred years 
before the Christian era; but the old city 
was almost entirely destroyed in 683 B.c. 
A new city was built by Nebuchadnezzar 
nearly a century later. This was in the 
form of a square, each side 15 miles long, 
with walls of such immense height and 
thickness as to constitute one of the won¬ 
ders of the world. It contained splendid 
edifices, large gardens and pleasure-grounds, 
especially the ‘hanging-gardens,’ a sort of 
lofty terraced structure supporting earth 
enough for trees to grow, and the cele¬ 
brated tower of Babel or temple of Belus, 
rising by stages to the height of 625 ft. 
(See Babel, Tower of) After the city was 
taken by Cyrus in 538 b.c., and Babylonia 
made a Persian province, it began to de¬ 
cline, and had suffered severely by the 
time of Alexander the Great. He in¬ 
tended to restore it, but was prevented by 
his death, which took place here in 323 B.c., 
from which time its decay was rapid. In¬ 
teresting discovei’ies have been made on its 
site in recent times, more especially of 
numerous and valuable inscriptions in the 
cuneiform or arrow-head character. The mo¬ 
dern town of Hillah is believed to represent 
the ancient city, and the plain here for mileg 

330 








BABYLONIA-BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. 


round is studded with vast mounds of earth 
and brick and imposing ruins. The greatest 
mound is Birs Nimrud, about 6 miles from 
Hillah. It rises nearly 200 ft., is crowned 
by a ruined tower, and is commonly be¬ 
lieved to be the remains of the ancient 
temple of Belus. Another great ruin- 
mound, called Mujellibeh, has also been 
assigned as its site. 

Babylonia (now Irak Arabi ), an old Asi¬ 
atic empire occupying the region watered by 
the lower course of the Euphrates and the 
Tigris, and by their combined stream. The 
inhabitants, though usually designated Ba¬ 
bylonians, were sometimes called Chaldeans, 
and it is thought that the latter name re¬ 
presents a superior caste who at a compara¬ 
tively late period gained influence in the 
country. At the earliest period of which 
we have record the whole valley of the 
Tigris and Euphrates was inhabited by 
tribes of Turanian or Tatar origin. Along 
with these, however, there early existed an 
intrusive Semitic element, which gradually 
increased in number till at the time the 
Babylonians and Assyrians (the latter being 
a kindred people) became known to the 
western historians they were essentially 
Semitic peoples. The great city Babylon 
(which see), or Babel, was the capital of 
Babylonia, which was called by the Hebrews 
Shinar. The country was, as it still is, 
exceedingly fertile, and must have anciently 
supported a dense population. The chief 
cities, besides Babylon, were Ur, Calneh, 
Erech, and Sippara. Babylonia and As¬ 
syria were often spoken of together as 
Assyria. 

The discovery and interpretation of the 
cuneiform inscriptions have enabled the 
history of Babylonia to be carried back 
to about 4000 B.C., at which period the 
inhabitants had attained a considerable de¬ 
gree of civilization, and the country was 
ruled by a number of kings or princes each 
in his own city. About 2700 b.c. Baby¬ 
lonia came under the rule of a single 
monarch. Latterly it had serious wars 
with neighbouring nations, and for several 
hundred years previous to 2000 b.c. Baby¬ 
lonia was subject to the neighbouring Elam. 
It then regained its independence, and for 
a thousand years it was the foremost state 
of Western Asia in power, as well as in 
science, art, and civilization. The rise of 
the Assyrian empire brought about the 
decline of Babylonia, which latterly was 
under Assyrian domination, though with 

331 


intervals of independence. Tiglath-Pileser 
II. of Assyria (745-727) made himself mas¬ 
ter of Babylonia; but the conquest of the 
country had to be repeated by his succes¬ 
sor, Sargon, who expelled the Babylonian 
king, Merodach-Baladan, and all but finally 
subdued the country, the complete subjuga¬ 
tion being effected by Sennacherib. After 
some sixty years the second or later Baby¬ 
lonian empire arose under Nabopolassar, 
who, joining the Medes against the As¬ 
syrians, freed Babylon from the supe¬ 
riority of the latter power, 625 B.c. The 
new empire was at its height of power and 
glory under Nabopolassar's son, Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar (604-561), who subjected Jerusalem, 
Tyre, Phoenicia, and even Egypt, and car¬ 
ried his dominion to the shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean and northwards to the Armenian 
mountains. The capital, Babylon, was re¬ 
built by him, and then formed one of the 
greatest and most magnificent cities the 
world has ever seen. He was succeeded by 
his son Evil-Merodach, but the dynasty soon 
came to an end, the last king being Nabo- 
netus or Nabonadius, who came to the throne 
in B.c. 555, and made his son, Belshazzar, 
co-ruler with him. Babylon was taken by 
Cyrus the Persian monarch in 538, and the 
second Babylonian empire came to an end, 
Babylonia being incorporated in the Persian 
empire. Its subsequent history was simi¬ 
lar to that of Assyria. 

The account of the civilization, arts, and 
social advancement of the Assyrians already 
given in the article Assyria may be taken 
as generally applying also to the Babylo¬ 
nians, though certain differences existed be¬ 
tween the two peoples. In Babylonia stone 
was not to be had, and consequently brick 
was the almost universal building material. 
Sculpture was thus less developed in Baby¬ 
lonia than in Assyria, and painting more. 
Babylonian art had also more of a religious 
character than that of Assyria, and the chief 
edifices found in ruins are temples. Weav¬ 
ing and pottery were carried to high perfec¬ 
tion. Astronomy was cultivated from the 
earliest times. The Babylonians had a 
number of deities, but latterly the chief or 
national deity was Bel Merodach, originally 
the Sun-god. Education was well attended 
to, and there were schools and libraries in 
connection with the temples. 

Babylon, Long Island, N. Y., a favorite 
summer resort; 4 hotels, 4 mills; 37 miles 
east of L. I. City. 

Babylonish Captivity, a term usually 



BABYROUSSA 


BACCIO DELLA PORTA. 


applied to the deportation of the two tribes 
of the kingdom of Judah to Babylon by 
Nebuchadnezzar, 585 B.c. 1 he duration of 
this captivity is usually reckoned seventy 
years, though strictly speaking it lasted 
only fifty-six years. A great part of the 
ten tribes of Israel had been previously 
taken captive to Assyria. 

Babyroussa (bab-i-rus'a; a Malay word 
signifying stag-hog), a species of wild hog 
(Sus or Porcus Babyrussa), a native of the 
Indian Archipelago. From the outside of the 



Babyroussa [Sus Babyrussa) 


upper jaw spring two teeth 12 inches long, 
curving upwards and backwards like horns, 
and almost touching the forehead. The 
tusks of the lower jaw also appear externally, 
though they are not so long as those of the 
upper jaw. Along the back are some weak 
bristles, and on the rest of the body only a 
sort of wool. These animals live in herds, 
feed on herbage, are sometimes tamed, and 
their flesh is well flavoured. 

Bac'carat, a gambling game of French 
origin, played by any number of players, or 
rather bettors, and a banker. The latter 
deals two cards to each player and two to 
himself, and covers the stakes of each with 
an equal sum. The cards are then examined, 
and according to the scores made the players 
take their own stake and the banker's, or 
the latter takes all or a certain number of 
the stakes. 

Bacchanalia, or Dionysia, feasts in hon¬ 
our of Bacchus or Dionysos, characterized by 
licentiousness and revelry, and celebrated in 
ancient Athens. In the processions were 
bands of Bacchantes of both sexes, who, in¬ 
spired by real or feigned intoxication, wan¬ 
dered about rioting and dancing. They were 
clothed in fawn-skins, crowned with ivy, and 
bore in their hands thyrsi , that is spears en¬ 


twined with ivy, or having a pine-cone stuck 
on the point. These feasts passed from the 
Greeks to the Romans, who celebrated them 
with still greater dissoluteness till the senate 
abolished them b.c. 187. 

Bacchante (bak-an'te), a person taking 
part in revels in honour of Bacchus. See 
Bacchanalia. 

Bacchiglione (bak-kil'yo-na), a river of 
Northern Italy, rises in the Alps, passes 
through the towns of Vicenza and Badua, 
and enters the Adriatic near Chioggia, after 
a course of about 90 miles. 

Bacchus (bak'us; in Greek, generally Dio¬ 
nysos), the god of wine, son of Zeus (Jupiter) 
and SdmSle. He first taught the cultiva¬ 
tion of the vine and the preparation of wine. 
To spread the knowledge of his invention 
he travelled over various countries and 
received in every quarter divine honours. 
Drawn by lions (some say panthers, tigers, 
or lynxes), he began his march, which re¬ 
sembled a triumphal procession. Those who 
opposed him were severely punished, but 
on those who received him hospitably he 
bestowed rewards. His love was shared by 
several; but Ariadne, whom he found de¬ 
serted upon Naxos, alone was elevated to 
the dignity of a wife, and became a sharer 
of his immortality. In art he is represented 
with the round, soft, and graceful form of a 
maiden rather than with that of a young 
man. His long waving hair is knitted be¬ 
hind in a knot, and wreathed with sprigs of 
ivy and vine leaves. He is usually naked; 
sometimes he has an ample mantle hung 
negligently round his shoulders; sometimes 
a fawn-skin hangs across his breast. He is 
often accompanied by Silenus, Bacchantes, 
Satyrs, &c. See Bacchanalia. 

Bacchylides (bak-kil'i-dez), born in the 
island of Cos, about the middle of the fifth 
century b.c., the last of the great lyric poets 
of Greece, a nephew of Simonides and a con¬ 
temporary of Pindar. Of his odes, hymns, 
paeans, triumphal songs, only a few frag¬ 
ments remain. 

Bacciocchi (bat-chok'e), Maria Anne 
Eliza Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, born 
at Ajaccio 1777, died near Trieste 1820; 
a great patroness of literature and art. She 
married Captain Bacciocchi, who in 1805 
was created Prince of Lucca and Piombino. 
She virtually ruled these principalities her¬ 
self, and as Grand-duchess of Tuscany she 
enacted the part of a queen. She fell w r ith 
the empire. 

Baccio Della Porta (bach'd), Italian 
332 












BACH-BACILLUS. 


fainter, better known under the name of 
Fra Bartolommeo , born at Florence 1469, 
died there 1517. He studied painting in 
Florence, and acquired a more perfect know¬ 
ledge of art from the works of Leonardo da 
"Vinci. He was an admirer and follower of 
Savonarola, on whose death he took the 
Dominican habit, and assumed the name of 
Fra Bartolommeo. He was the friend of 
Michael Angelo and Raphael; painted many 
religious pictures, among them a Saint Mark 
and Saint Sebastian, which are greatly ad¬ 
mired. His colouring, in vigour and bril¬ 
liancy, comes near to that of Titian and 
Giorgione. 

Bach (ba ,h), Johann Sebastian, one of 
the greatest of German musicians, was 
born in 1685, at Eisenach; died in 1750, at 
Leipzig. Being the son of a musician he 



Johann Sebastian Bach. 


was early trained in the art, and soon dis¬ 
tinguished himself. In 1703 he was engaged 
as a player at the court of Weimar, and 
subsequently he was musical director to the 
Duke of Anhalt-Kothen, and latterly held 
an appointment at Leipzig. He paid a 
visit to Potsdam on the invitation of 
Frederick the Great. As a player on the 
harpsichord and organ he had no equal 
among his contemporaries; but it was not 
till a century after his death that his great¬ 
ness as a composer was fully recognized. 
His compositions breathe an original in¬ 
spiration, and are largely of the religious 
kind. They include pieces, vocal and instru¬ 
mental, for the organ, piano, stringed and 
keyed instruments; church cantatas, ora¬ 
torios, masses, passion music, &c. More 

333 


than fifty musical performers have pro¬ 
ceeded from this family. Sebastian him¬ 
self had eleven sons, all distinguished as 
musicians. The most renowned were the 
following: —Wilhelm Friedemann, born 
in 1710 at Weimar; died at Berlin in 1784. 
He was one of the most scientific harmon¬ 
ists and most skilful organists. — Karl 
Philipp Emmanuel, born in 1714 at Wei¬ 
mar; died in 1788 at Hamburg. He com¬ 
posed mostly for the piano, and published 
melodies for Gellert’s hymns; wrote on the 
True Manner of Playing the Harpsichord. 
—Johann Christoph Friedrich, born at 
Weimar, 1732; died in 1795; a great organ¬ 
ist, is known also by the music he published. 
—Johann Christian, born in 1735 at 
Leipzig; died in London 1782; was a favour¬ 
ite composer and conductor with the English 
public. 

Bacharach (baA'a-raA), a small place 
of 1900 inhabitants on the Rhine, 12 miles 
s. of Coblenz. The vicinity produces excel¬ 
lent wine, which was once highly esteemed. 
The view from the ruins of the castle is 
one of the sublimest on the Rhine. 

Bach'elor, a term applied anciently to a 
person in the first or probationary stage of 
knighthood who has not yet raised his stan¬ 
dard in the field. It also denotes a person 
who has taken the first degree in the liberal 
arts and sciences, or in divinity, law, or 
medicine, at a college or university; or a 
man of any age who has not been married. 
—A knight bachelor is one who has been 
raised to the dignity of a knight without 
being made a member of any of the orders 
of chivalry such as the Garter or the 
Thistle. 

Bachelor’s Buttons, the double-flowering 
buttercup (Ranunculus acris), with white or 
yellow blossoms, common in gardens. 

Bachian (bach'an), one of the Molucca 
Islands, immediately s. of the equator, s.w. 
of Gilolo; area, 800 sq. miles. It is ruled 
by a native sultan under the Dutch. 

Bachmut (baA-mot'), a town of Southern 
Russia, gov. of Ekaterinoslav, with a trade 
in cattle, tallow, &c., and coal and rock-salt 
mines. Pop. 17,674. 

Bacilla'ria, a genus of microscopic algae 
belonging to the class Diatomaceae, the sili¬ 
ceous remains of which abound in cretaceous, 
tertiary, and more recent geological de¬ 
posits. 

Bacillus, the name applied to certain 
minute rod-like microscopic organisms (Bac¬ 
teria) which often appear in putrefactions, 



Back — 

and one of which is believed to hold a con¬ 
stant causative relation to tubercle in the 
lung, and to be present in all cases of phthisis. 
Others are alleged to be connected with 


A 



Bacillus of ordinary Putrefaction, highly magnified. 

A. 1, single bacilli; 2, bacilli forming threads and deve¬ 
loping spores. The bright oval body in the centre of each 
bacillus is a spore. B. 1, ordinary form without spores; 
2, with spores; 3, free spores; 4, a mass of spores. (After 
Klein.) 

anthrax, typhoid fever, erysipelas, &c. See 
Bacteria. 

Back, Admiral Sir George, eminent 
English Arctic discoverer, born 1796, died 
1878. He accompanied Franklin and Rich¬ 
ardson in their northern expeditions, and in 
1833-34 headed an expedition to the Arc¬ 
tic Ocean through the Hudson Bay Com¬ 
pany’s territory, on which occasion he win¬ 
tered at the Great Slave Lake, and dis¬ 
covered the Back or Great Fish River. 

Backergunge. See Bakarganj. 

Backgam'mon, a game played by two 
persons upon a table or board made for the 
purpose, with pieces or men, dice-boxes, and < 
dice. The table is in two parts, on which 
are twenty-four black and white spaces 
called points. Each player has fifteen men 
of different colours for the purpose of dis¬ 
tinction. The movements of the men are 
made in accordance with the numbers 
turned up by the dice. 

Backhuysen (bak'hoi-zn), Ludolf, a 
celebrated painter of the Dutch school, 
particularly in sea pieces, born in 1631, 
died 1709. His most famous picture is a 
sea piece which the burgomasters of Am¬ 
sterdam commissioned him to paint as a 
present to Louis XVI. It is still at Paris. 

Backwardation, a stock exchange term 
signifying the rate paid by a speculative 
seller of stock for the privilege of carrying 
over or continuing a bargain from one fort¬ 
nightly account to another, instead of clos¬ 
ing it on the appointed day. 

Bacninh, a town of Tonquin, on the 
Red River, fortified and containing a French 
garrison, being in an important strategic 
position. Pop. 7000. 

Ba'con, Anthony, elder brother to the 
celebrated lord-chancellor, was born in 1558 


BACON. 

and died in 1601. He was a skilful politi¬ 
cian, and much devoted to learned pursuits. 
He became personally acquainted with 
most of the foreign literati of the day, 
and gained the friendship of Henry IV. ef 
France. Lord Bacon dedicated to him the 
first edition of the Essays. 

Bacon, Francis, Baron of Verulam, Vis¬ 
count St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor 
of England; was born at London in 1561, 
died at Highgate in 1626. His father, 
Nicholas Bacon, was keeper of the great 
seal under Queen Elizabeth. (See Bacon , 
Nicholas.) He was educated at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, and in 1575 was admit¬ 
ted to Gray’s Inn. In 1576-79 he was at 
Paris with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English 
ambassador. The death of his father called 
him back to England, and being left in 
straitened circumstances he zealously pur¬ 
sued the study of law, and was admitted 



Lord Bacon. 


a barrister in 1582. In 1584 he became 
member of parliament for Melcombe Regis, 
and soon after drew up a Letter of 
Advice to Queen Elizabeth, an able poli¬ 
tical memoir. In 1586 he was member for 
Taunton, in 1589 for Liverpool. A year 
or two after he gained the Earl of Essex 
as a friend and patron. Bacon’s talents 
and his connection with the lord-treasurer 
Burleigh, who had married his mother's 
sister, and his son Sir Robert Cecil, first 
secretary of state, seemed to promise him 
the highest promotion; but he had dis¬ 
pleased the queen, and when he applied for 
the attorney-generalship, and next for the 
solicitor-generalship (1595), he was unsuc¬ 
cessful. Essex endeavoured to indemnify 

334 



BACON. 


him by the donation of an estate in land. 
Bacon, however, forgot his obligations to his 
benefactor, and not only abandoned him as 
soon as he had fallen into disgrace, but with¬ 
out being obliged took part against him on 
his trial, in 1601, and was active in obtain¬ 
ing his conviction. He had been chosen 
member for the county of Middlesex in 1593, 
and for Southampton in 1597, and had long 
been a queen’s counsel. The reign of James 
I. was more favourable to his interest. He 
was assiduous in courting the king’s favour, 
and J ames, who was ambitious of being con¬ 
sidered a patron of letters, conferred upon 
him in 1603 the order of knighthood. In 
1604 he was appointed king’s counsel, with 
a pension of £60; in 1606 he married; in 
1607 he became solicitor-general, and six 
years after attorney-general. Between 
James and his pai'liament he was anxious 
to produce harmony, but his efforts were 
without avail, and his obsequiousness and 
servility gained him enmity and discredit. 
In 1617 he was made lord-keeper of the seals; 
in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of England 
and Baron Yerulam. In this year he lent 
his influence to bring a verdict of guilty 
against Raleigh. In 1621 he was made 
Viscount St. Albans. Soon after this his 
reputation received a fatal blow. A new 
parliament was formed in 1621, and the lord- 
chancellor was accused before the house 
of bribery, corruption, and other malprac¬ 
tices. It is difficult to ascertain the full 
extent of his guilt; but he seems to have 
been unable to justify himself, and handed 
in a ‘confession and humble submission,’ 
throwing himself on the mercy of the Peers. 
He was condemned to pay a fine of £40,000, 
to be committed to the Tower during the 
pleasure of the king, declared incompetent 
to hold any office of state, and banished 
from court for ever. The sentence, how¬ 
ever, was never carried out. The fine was 
remitted almost as soon as imposed, and he 
was imprisoned for only a few days. He 
survived bis fall a few years, during this 
time occupying himself with his literary 
and scientific works, and vainly hoping for 
political employment. In 1597 he pub¬ 
lished his celebrated Essays, which imme¬ 
diately became very popular, were succes¬ 
sively enlarged and extended, and trans¬ 
lated into Latin, French, and Italian. The 
treatise on the Advancement of Learning 
appeared in 1605; The Wisdom of the 
Ancients in 1609 (in Latin); his great 
philosophical work, the Novum Organum 

335 


(in Latin), in 1620 ; and the De Augmentis 
Scientiarum, a much enlarged edition (in 
Latin) of the Advancement, in 1623. His 
New Atlantis was written about 1614-17; 
Life of Henry VII. about 1621. Various 
minor productions also proceeded from his 
pen. Numerous editions of his works have 
been published, by far the best being that of 
Messrs. Spedding, Ellis, & Heath (1858-74). 
Bacon was great as a moralist, a historian, 
a writer on politics, and a rhetorician; but it 
is as the father of the inductive method in 
science, as the powerful exponent of the 
principle that facts must be observed and 
collected before theorizing, that he occupies 
the grand position he holds among the 
world’s great ones. His moral character, 
however, was not on a level with his in¬ 
tellectual, self-aggrandizement being the 
main aim of his life. We need do no more 
than allude to the preposterous attempt that 
has been made to prove that Bacon was the 
real author of the plays attributed to Shaks- 
pere, an attempt that only ignorance of 
Bacon and Shakspere could uphold and tol¬ 
erate. 

Bacon, John, English sculptor, born 
1740, died 1799. Among his chief works are 
two groups for the interior of the Ro} r al Aca¬ 
demy; the statue of Judge Blackstone for All 
Souls College, Oxford; another of Henry VI. 
for Eton College; the monument of Lord 
Chatham in Westminster Abbey; and the 
statues of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Howard in 
St. Paul’s Cathedral. 

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, father of Lord 
Bacon, lord-keeper of the great seal, born 
1510, died 1579. Henry VIII. gave him 
several lucrative offices, which he retained 
under Edward VI. He lived in retirement 
during the reign of Mary, but Queen Eliza¬ 
beth appointed him lord-keeper for life. 
He was the intimate friend of Lord Bur¬ 
leigh, a sister of whose wife he married, 
and by her became the father of the great 
chancellor. 

Bacon, Roger, an English monk, and 
one of the most profound and original 
thinkers of his day, was born about 1214, 
near Ilchester, Somersetshire; died at Ox¬ 
ford in 1294. He first entered the Uni¬ 
versity of Oxford, and went afterwards to 
that of Paris, where he is said to have dis¬ 
tinguished himself and received the degree 
of Doctor of Theology. About 1250 he 
returned to England, entered the order 
of Franciscans, and fixed his abode at Ox¬ 
ford, but having incurred the suspicion of 


BACTERIA 

his ecclesiastical superiors he was sent to 
Paris and kept in confinement for ten years, 
without writing materials, books, or instru¬ 
ments. The cause seems to have been 
simple enough. He had been a diligent 
student of the chemical, physical, and mathe¬ 
matical sciences, and had made discoveries, 
and deduced results, which appeared so 
extraordinary to the ignorant that they 
were believed to be works of magic. This 
opinion was countenanced by the jealousy 
and hatred of the monks of his fraternity. 
In subsequent times he was popularly 
classed among those who had been in league 
with Satan. Having been set at liberty he 
enjoyed a brief space of quiet while Clement 
IV. was pope; but in 1278 he was again 
thrown into prison, where he remained for 
at least ten years. Of the close of his life 
little is known. His most important work 
is his Opus Majus, where he discusses the 
relation of philosophy to religion, and then 
treats of language, metaphysics, optics, and 
experimental science. He was undoubtedly 
the earliest philosophical experimentalist in 
Britain; he made signal advances in optics; 
was an excellent chemist; and in all proba¬ 
bility discovered gunpowder. He was in¬ 
timately acquainted with geography and 
astronomy, as appears by his discovery of 
the errors of the calendar, and their causes, 
and by his proposals for correcting them, 
in which he approached very near to truth. 

Bacte'ria (Gr. bakterion, a rod), a class of 
very minute microscopic organisms, often of 
a rod-like form, which are regarded as of vege¬ 
table nature, and as being the cause of putre¬ 
faction; they are also called microbes or 
microphytes. The genus Bacterium , in a 
restricted sense, comprises microscopic uni¬ 
cellular rod-shaped vegetable organisms, 
which multiply by transverse division of the 
cells. Species are found in all decomposing 
animal and vegetable liquids. The bacilli (see 
Bacillus) are often spoken of as bacteria, this 
latter term being used in a wide sense and 
comprising organisms of various forms and 
with several distinct names, as spirillum , 
micrococcus , &c. They consist of a mass of 
protoplasm inclosed in a membrane, and all 
have at some stage or other cilia serving for 
locomotion. Reproduction is asexual and 
by division. For their importance to man 
in regard to their connection with disease 
see Germ Theory. 

Bactria'na, or Bactria, a country of 
ancient Asia, south of the Oxus and reach¬ 
ing to the w r est of the Hindu Kush. It is 


— BADEN - . 

often regarded as the original home of the 
Indo-European races. A Graeco-Bactrian 
kingdom flourished about the third century 
B.C., but its history is obscure. 

Baculi'tes, a genus of fossil ammonites, 
characteristic of the chalk, having a straight 
tapering shell. 

Ba'cup, a municipal borough of England, 
in Lancashire, 18 miles N. of Manchester. 
The chief manufacturing establishments 
are connected with cotton-spinning and 
power-loom weaving; there are also iron- 
works, Turkey-red dyeing works, and in 
the neighbourhood numerous coal-pits and 
immense stone quarries. Pop. 23,498. 

Badagry, a British seaport on the Slave 
Coast, Upper Guinea, 50 miles E.N.E. of 
Whydah. Pop. about 10,000. 

Badajoz (ba-da-Aoth'; anc. Pax Au¬ 
gusta), the fortified capital of the Spanish 
province of Badajoz, on the left bank of the 
Guadiana, which is crossed by a stone 
bridge of twenty-eight arches. It is a 
bishop’s see, and has an interesting cathe¬ 
dral. During the Peninsular war Badajoz 
was besieged by Marshal Soult, and taken 
in March, 1811. It was twice attempted 
by the English, on 5th and 29th May, 1811, 
and was besieged by Wellington on 16th 
March, and taken 6th April, 1812. Pop. 
22,860. 

Badakshan', a territory of Central Asia, 
tributary to the Ameer of Afghanistan. 
It has the Oxus on the north, and the Hindu 
Kush on the south; and has lofty mountains 
and fertile valleys; the chief town is Faiza- 
bad. The inhabitants profess Mohamme¬ 
danism. Pop. 100,000. 

Badalona (ba-da-lo'na), a Mediterranean 
seaport of Spain, 5 miles from Barcelona. 
Pop. 13,749. 

Baden (ba/den), Grand-duchy of, one 
of the more important states of the German 
Empire, situated in the s.w. of Germany, 
to the west of Wurteinberg. It is divided 
into four districts, Constance, Freiburg, 
Karlsruhe, and Mannheim; has an area of 
5824 sq. miles, and a pop. of 1,656,817. It 
is mountainous, being traversed to a con¬ 
siderable extent by the lofty plateau of the 
Schwarzwald or Black Forest, which attains 
its highest point in the Feldberg (4904 ft.). 
The nucleus of this plateau consists of 
gneiss and granite. In the north it sinks 
down towards the Odenwald, which is, how¬ 
ever, of different geological structure, being 
composed for the most part of red sand¬ 
stone. The whole of Baden, except a 

336 



BADEN — 

small portion in the s.e., in which the 
Danube takes its rise, belongs to the basin 
of the Rhine, which bounds it on the south 
and west. Numerous tributaries of the 
Rhine intersect it, the chief being the 
Neckar. Lakes are numerous, and include 
a considerable part of the Lake of Constance. 
The climate varies much. The hilly parts, 
especially in the east, are cold and have a 
long winter, while the valley of the Rhine 
enjoys the finest climate of Germany. The 
principal minerals worked are coal, salt, iron, 
zinc, and nickel. The number of mineral 
springs is remarkably great, and of these not 
a few are of great celebrity. The vegetation 
is peculiarly rich, and there are magnificent 
forests. The cereals comprise wheat, oats, 
barley, and rye. Potatoes, hemp, tobacco, 
wine, and sugar-beet are largely produced. 
Several of the wines, both white and red, 
rank in the first class. Baden has long been 
famous for its fruits also. Of the total area 
42 per cent is under cultivation, 37 per cent 
under forest, and 17 per cent under mea¬ 
dows and pastures. The farms are mostly 
quite small. The manufactures are impor¬ 
tant. Among them are textiles, tobacco 
and cigars, chemicals, machinery, pottery 
ware, jewelry (especially at Pforzheim), 
wooden clocks, confined chiefly to the dis¬ 
tricts of the Black Porest, musical boxes 
and other musical toys. The capital is 
Carlsruhe, about 5 miles from the Rhine; 
the other chief towns are Mannheim, 
Freiburg-im-Breisgau, with a Roman Ca¬ 
tholic university; Baden, and Heidelberg. 
Baden has warm mineral springs, which 
were known and used in the time of the 
Romans. Heidelberg has a university 
(Protestant), founded in 1386, the oldest in 
the present German Empire. The railways 
have a length of 850 miles, and are nearly all 
state property. In the time of the Roman 
Empire southern Baden belonged to the 
Roman province of Rhsetia. Under the 
old German Empire it was a margravi- 
ate, which in 1533 was divided into Baden- 
Baden and Baden-Durlach, but reunited in 
1771. The title of grand-duke was con¬ 
ferred by Napoleon in 1806, and in the 
same year Baden was extended to its present 
limits. The executive power is vested in 
the grand-duke, the legislative in a house 
of legislature, consisting of an upper and a 
lower chamber. The former consists partly 
of hereditary members; the latter consists 
of elected representatives of the people. 
The revenue is mainly derived from taxes 
vol. i. 337 


- BADGER. 

on land and incomes, and the produce of 
crown - lands, forests, and mines. The 
revenue and expenditure are each usually 
about £2,000,000. Baden sends three mem¬ 
bers to the German Bundesrath or Federal 
Council, and fourteen deputies to the Diet. 
Two-thirds of the population are Roman 
Catholics, the rest Protestants. 

Baden (or Baden-Baden, to distinguish it 
from other towns of the same name; German 
Bad, a bath), a town and watering-place, 
Grand-duchy of Baden, 18 miles s.s.w. Carls¬ 
ruhe, built in the form of an amphitheatre 
on a spur of the Black Forest, overhanging 
a valley, through which runs a little stream 
Oosbach. Baden has been celebrated from 
the remotest antiquity for its thermal baths; 
and it used also to be celebrated for its 
gaming saloons. It has many good build¬ 
ings, and a castle, the summer residence of 
the grand-duke. Pop. 12,782. 

Baden, a town of Austria, 15 miles s.w. of 
ATenna. It has numerous hot sulphurous 
springs, used both for bathing and drink¬ 
ing, and very much frequented. Pop. 9645. 

Baden, a small town of Switzerland, 
canton Aargau, celebrated for its hot sul¬ 
phurous baths, which attract many visitors. 
Pop. 4000. 

Badge (baj), a distinctive device, emblem, 
mark, honorary decoration, or special cog¬ 
nizance, used originally to identify a knight 
or distinguish his followers, now worn as 
a sign of office or licensed employment, as 
a token of membership in some society, or 
generally as a mark showing the relation 
of the wearer to any person, occupation, or 
order. 

Badger (baj'er), a plantigrade,carnivorous 
mammal, allied both to the bears and to the 



Badger (Meles vulgaris). 


weasels, of a clumsy make, with short thick 
legs, and long claws on the fore-feet. The 
common badger (Meles vulgaris) is as large 
as a middling-sized dog, but much lower on 
the legs, with a flatter and broader body, 



BADGER DOG-BAGDAD. 


very thick tough hide, and long coarse hair. 
It inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, 
burrows, is indolent and sleepy, feeds by 
night on vegetables, small quadrupeds, &c. 
Its flesh may be eaten, and its hair is used 
for artists’ brushes in painting. The Ameri¬ 
can badger belongs to a separate genus. 
Badger baiting, or drawing the badger , is a 
barbarous sport formerly, and yet to some 
extent, practised, generally as an attraction 
to public-houses of the lowest sort. A 
badger is put in a barrel, and one or more 
dogs are put in to drag him out. When 
this is effected he is returned to his barrel, 
to be similarly assailed by a fresh set. The 
badger usually makes a most determined and 
savage resistance. 

Badger Dog, a long-bodied, short-legged 
dog, with rather large pendulous ears, usu¬ 
ally short haired, black, and with yellow 
extremities; often called by its German 
name Dachshund. 

Badminton, an outside game closely re¬ 
sembling lawn-tennis, but played with 
battledore and shuttlecock instead of ball 
and racket: named after a seat of the Duke 
of Beaufort, in Gloucestershire. 

Badrinath (-at'), a peak of the main Him¬ 
alayan range, in Garhwal District, North- 
Western Provinces, 23,210 feet above the 
sea. On one of its shoulders at an elevation 
of 10,400 feet stands a celebrated temple of 
Vishnu, which some years attracts as many 
as 50,000 pilgrims. 

Baedeker (ba'de-ker), Karl, a German 
publisher, born 1801, died 1859; originator 
of a celebrated series of guide-books for 
travellers. 

Baena (ba-a'na), a town of Spain, in 
Andalusia, province of and 24 miles S.S.E. 
from Cordova. Pop. 12,944. 

Baeza (ba-a'tha; anciently, Beatia ), a 
town, Spain, in Andalusia, 22 miles e.n.e. 
from Jaen, with 10,851 inhabitants. The 
principal edifices are the cathedral, the uni¬ 
versity (now suppressed), and the old monas¬ 
tery of St Philip de Neri. 

Baffa (anc. Paphos), a seaport on the 
s.w. coast of Cyprus. Pop. 1000. It occu¬ 
pies the site of New Paphos, which, under 
the Romans, was full of beautiful temples 
and other public buildings. Old Paphos 
stood a little to the south-east. 

Baffin, William, an English navigator, 
born 1584; famous for his discoveries in the 
Arctic regions; in 1616 ascertained the 
limits of Baffin Bay; killed at the siege of 
Ormuz, in the East Indies, 1622. 


Baffin Bay, on the n. e. of North America 
between Greenland and the islands that lie, 
on the N. of the continent; discovered by 
Baffin in 1616. 

Bagasse', the sugar-cane in its dry 
crushed state as delivered from the mill, 
and after the main portion of its juce has 
been expressed; used as fuel in the sugar 
factory, and called also cane-trash. 

Bagatelle', a game played on a long flat 
board covered with cloth like a billiard- 
table, with spherical balls and a cue or mace. 
At the end of the board are nine cups or 
sockets of just sufficient size to receive the 
balls. These sockets are arranged in the 
form of a regular octagon, with the ninth 
in the middle, and are numbered consecu¬ 
tively from one upwards. Nine balls are 
used, generally one black, four white, and 
four red, the distinction between white and 
red being made only for the sake of variety. 
In the ordinary game, at starting, the black 
ball is placed on a point in the longitudinal 
middle line of the board, a few inches in 
front of the nearest of the sockets, and the 
player places one of his eight balls on a 
corresponding point at the other end of the 
board, and tries to strike the black ball into 
one of the sockets with his own. After 
this his object is to place as many of his 
balls as possible in the sockets. Each ball 
so placed counts as many as the socket is 
numbered for, and the black ball always 
counts double. He who first makes the 
number of points agreed on wins. 

Bagdad', capital of a Turkish pashalic of 
the same name (70,000 sq. miles, 1, 00,000 
inhabitants), in the southern part of Meso¬ 
potamia (now Irak Arabi). The greater 
part of it lies on the eastern bank of the 
Tigris, which is crossed by a bridge of boats; 
old Bagdad, the residence of the caliphs 
(now in ruins), was on the western bank of 
the river. The modern city is surrounded 
with a brick wall about 6 miles in circuit; 
the houses are mostly built of brick, the 
streets unpaved, and very narrow. The 
palace of the governor is spacious. Of the 
mosques, only a few attract notice; the 
bazaars are all large and well stocked; that 
of Dawd Pacha still ranks as one of the 
most splendid in the world. Manufactures: 
leather, silks, cottons, woollens, carpets, &c. 
Steamers ply on the river between Bagdad 
and Bassorah, and the town exports wheat, 
dates, galls, gum, mohair, carpets, &c., to 
Europe. Bagdad is inhabited by Turks, 
Arabs, Persians, Armenians, Jews, &c., and 

338 



tUGEHOT-BAGNARA. 


& small number of Europeans. Estimated 
pop. over 100,000. The Turks compose 
three-fourths of the whole population. The 
city has been frequently visited by the 
plague, and in 1831 was nearly devastated 
by that calamity. Bagdad was founded in 


762, by the Caliph AlmanSUf, and raised 
to a high degree of splendour in the ninth 
century by Harun A1 Rashid. It is the 
scene of a number of the tales of the 
‘Arabian Nights.’ In the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury it was stormed by Hulaku, grandson 



Bagdad, from the South. 


of Genghis-Khan, who caused the reigning 
caliph to be slain, and destroyed the cali¬ 
phate. 

Bagehot (baj'ot), Walter, English econo¬ 
mist and journalist, born at Langport, 
Somerset, 1826; died at the same place 
1877. He graduated at the London Univer¬ 
sity, 1848, and was for some time associated 
with his father in the banking business in 
London. He was one of the editors of the 
National Review (1855-64), and from 1860 
till his death he was editor and part pro¬ 
prietor of the Economist. His chief works 
are: Physics and Politics, The English Con¬ 
stitution, Lombard Street, and Studies, Liter¬ 
ary, Biographic, and Economic. 

Bag'gala, a two-masted Arab boat, gener¬ 
ally 200-250 tons burden, used for trading 
in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, &c. 

Baggesen (bag'e-sen), J ens, a Danish poet, 
who also wrote much in German; born 1764, 
at Korsor; died at Dresden, 1826. He tried 
lyric, epic, dramatic poetry, and both serious 
and humorous. His best productions are 
his smaller poems and songs, several of which 
are very popular with his countrymen. 

Baghelkand, a tract of country in Central 
India, occupied by a collection of native 
states (Rewah being the chief), under the 
governor-general’s agent for Central India; 
area, 11,323 sq. miles; pop. 1,512,595. 

339 


Bagheria (ba-ga're-a), a town of Sicily, 
prov. of Palermo, 9 miles by railway from 
the city of Palermo. Pop. 12,000. 

Bagimont’s Roll, a rent-roll of Scotland, 
made up in 1275 by Baiamund or Boiamond 
de Vicci, vulgarly called Bagimovt, who was 
sent from Rome by the pope, in the reign of 
Alexander III., to collect the tithe of all 
the church livings in Scotland for an expe¬ 
dition to the Holy Land. It remained the 
statutory valuation, according to which the 
benefices were taxed, till the Reformation. 
A copy of it as it existed in the reign of 
James V. is in the Advocates’ Library, 
Edinburgh. 

Bagirmi (ba-gir'me), or Baghermi, a Mo¬ 
hammedan negro state in Central Africa, 
situated between Bornu and Waday, to the 
south of Lake Tchad. It is mostly a plain; 
has an area of about 56,000 sq. miles, and 
about 1,500,000 inhabitants. The people 
are industrious, and have attained to a con¬ 
siderable pitch of civilization. 

Bagnacavallo, ban-ya-ka-valTo), Barto¬ 
lommeo Ramenghi, Italian painter, born 
1484, died 1542. Called Bagnacavallo from 
the village where he was born. At Rome 
he was a pupil of Raphael, and assisted in 
decorating the gallery of the Vatican. 

Bagnara (ba-nya'ra), a seaport near the 
s.w. extremity of Italy. Pop. 6749. 
























BAGNERES DE BTGORRE-BAHAMA ISLANDS. 


Bagneres deBigorre (ban-yar de be-gorr), 
a watering-place, France, department Hautes 
Pyrenees, on the left bank of the Adour. 
It owes its chief celebrity to its baths, 
which are sulphurous and saline, but it has 
also manufacturing and other industries. 
Pop. 7634. 

Bagneres de Luchon (ban-yar delu-shon), 
a town, France, department Haute Garonne, 
in a valley surrounded by wooded hills, one 
of the principal watering-places of the 
Pyrenees, having sulphurous thermal waters, 


said to be beneficial in rheumatic complaints. 
Resident pop. 4000. 

Bagpipe, a musical wind-instrument of 
very great antiquity, having been used 
among the ancient Greeks, and being a 
favourite instrument over Europe generally 
in the fifteenth century. It still continues 
in use among the country people of Poland, 
Italy, the south of France, and in Scotland 
and Ireland. Though now often regarded as 
the national instrument of Scotland, espe¬ 
cially Celtic Scotland, it is only Scottish by 


Entrance to Port Nassau, Bahama Islands. 



adoption, being introduced into that country 
from England. It consists of a leathern bag, 
which recei\ es the air from the mouth, or 
from bellows; and of pipes, into which the air 
is pressed from the bag by the performer’s 
elbow. In the common or Highland form 
one pipe (called the chanter) plays the 
melody; of the three others (called drones) 
two are in unison with the lowest A of the 
chanter, and the third and longest an octave 
lower, the sound being produced by means 
of reeds. The chanter has eight holes, 
which the performer stops and opens at 
pleasure, but the scale is imperfect and the 
tone harsh. There are several species of 
bagpipes, as the soft and melodious Irish 
bagpipe, supplied with wind by a bellows, 
and having several keyed drones; the old 
English bagpipe (now no longer used); the 
Italian bagpipe, a very rude instrument; &c. 

Bagration (bag-ra'tyon), Peter, Prince, 
a distinguished Russian general, descended 


from a noble Georgian family. He was 
born in 1756, entered the Russian service 
in 1783, and was constantly engaged in 
active service till he was mortally wounded 
at the battle of Borodino, Sept. 1812. 

Bagshot-sand, in geol. the collective name 
for a series of beds of siliceous sand, occu¬ 
pying extensive tracts round Bagshot, in 
Surrey, and in the New Forest, Hampshire, 
the whole reposing on the London clay; 
generally devoid of fossils. 

Baha'ma Islands, or Lucayos, a group 
of islands in the West Indies, forming a 
colony belonging to Britain, lying n.e. of 
Cuba and s.E. of the coast of Florida, the 
Gulf-stream passing between them and the 
mainland. They extend a distance of up¬ 
wards of 600 miles, and are said to be twenty- 
nine in number, besides keys and rocks in¬ 
numerable. The principal islands are Grand 
Bahama, Great and Little Abaco, Andros 
Islands, New Providence, Eleuthera, San 






























































































BAHAR- 

Salvador, Great Exuma, Watling Island, 
Long Island, Crooked Island, Acklin Island, 
Mariguana Island, Great Inagua. Of the 
whole group about twenty are inhabited, 
the most populous being New Providence, 
which contains the capital, Nassau, the 
largest being Andros, 100 miles long, 20 to 
40 broad. They are low and fiat, and have 
in many parts extensive forests. Total area, 
5450 sq. miles. The soil is a thin but rich 
vegetable mould, and the principal product is 
pine-apples, which form the most important 
export. Other fruits are also grown, with 
cotton, sugar, maize, yams, ground-nuts, 
coco-nuts, &c. Sponges are obtained in 
large quantity and are exported. Total 
exports in 1S89, £130,512. The currency 
is English, but American coins circulate 
freely. The islands are a favourite winter 
resort for those afflicted with pulmonary 
diseases. Watling Island is now by best 
authorities believed to be same as Guana- 
hani, the land first touched on by Columbus 
(October 12, 1492) on his first great voyage 
of discovery. The first British settlement 
was made on New Providence towards the 
close of the seventeenth century. A num¬ 
ber of loyal Americans settled in the islands 
after the war of independence. Pop. 47,278, 
including 14,000 whites. 

Bahar', or Barre, an East Indian mea¬ 
sure of weight, varying considerably in dif¬ 
ferent localities and in accordance with the 
substances weighed, the range being from 
223 to 625 lbs. 

Baha'walpur, a town of India, capital of 
state of same name in the Punjab, 2 miles 
from the Sutlej; surrounded by a mud wall 
and containing the extensive palace of the 
Nawab. Pop. 13,635. The state has an 
area of 15,000 sq. miles, of which 10,000 is 
desert, the only cultivated lands lying along 
the Indus and Sutlej. Pop. 573,494. 

Bahia (ba-e'a; formerly St. Salvador), a 
town of Brazil, on the Bay of All Saints, 
province of Bahia. It consists of a lower 
town, which is little more than an irregular, 
narrow, and dirty street, stretching about 
4 miles along the shore; and an upper town, 
with which it is connected by a steep street, 
much better built. The harbour is one of 
the best in South America; and the trade, 
chiefly in sugar, cotton, coffee, tobacco, hides, 
piassava, and tapioca, is very extensive. Pop. 
150,000. The province, area, 164,649 square 
miles, pop. in 1888,1,821,089, has much fer¬ 
tile land, both along the coast and in the 
interior. 


- BAIKAL. 

Bahr (bar), an Arabic word signifying 
sea or large river; as in Bahr-el-Huleh, the 
Lake Merom in Palestine; Bahr-el-Abiad, 
the White Nile, Bahr-el-Azrek, the Blue 
Nile, which together unite at Khartoum. 

Bahraich (ba-rach'), a flourishing town of 
India, in Oudh. Pop. 19,439. 

Bahrein (ba'rln) Islands, a group of is¬ 
lands in the Persian Gulf, in an indentation 



on the Arabian coast. The principal island, 
usually called Bahrein, is about 27 miles in 
length and 10 in breadth. The principal 
town is Menamah or Manama; pop. 8000. 
The Bahrein Islands are chiefly noted for 
their pearl-fisheries, which were known to 
the ancients, and which employ in the sea¬ 
son about 400 boats with from 8 to 20 men 
each. Total pop. estimated at 70,000. 

Bahr-el-Ghazal, a large river of Central 
Africa, a western tributary of the White 
Nile. 

Baiadeer. See Bayadere. 

Baise (bl'e), an ancient Roman watering- 
place on the coast of Campania, 10 miles 
west of Naples. Many of the wealthy 
Romans had country houses at Baiae, which 
Horace preferred to all other places. Ruins 
of temples, baths, and villas still attract the 
attention of archaeologists. 

Baikal (bfkal), a large fresh-water lake 
in Eastern Siberia, 360 miles long, and about 
50 in extreme breadth, interspersed with 
islands; Ion. 104° to 110° e.; lat. 51° 20' to 
55 J 20' N. It is surrounded by rugged and 
lofty mountains; contains seals, and many 
fish, particularly salmon, sturgeon, and pike. 


341 












BAIKIE - 

Its greatest depth is over 4000 feet. It 
receives the waters of the Upper Angara, 
Selenga, Barguzin, &c., and discharges its 
waters by the Lower Angara. It is frozen 
over in winter. 

Baikie, William Balfour, born in the 
Orkney Islands 1824, died at Sierra Leone 
1863. He joined the British navy, and was 
made surgeon and naturalist of the Niger 
expedition, 1854. He took the command 
on the death of the senior officer, and ex¬ 
plored the Niger for 250 miles. Another 
expedition, which started in 1857, passed two 
years in exploring, when the vessel was 
wrecked, and all the members, with the 
exception of Baikie, returned to England. 
With none but native assistants he formed 
a settlement at the confluence of the Beniffi 
and the Quorra, in which he was ruler, 
teacher, and physician, and within a few 
years he opened the Niger to navigation, 
made roads, established a market, &c. 

Bail, the person or persons who procure 
the release of a prisoner from custody by 
becoming surety for his appearance in court 
at the proper time; also, the security given 
for the release of a prisoner from custody. 

Bailen (bi-len'), a town of s. Spain, prov. 
Jaen, with lead mines. Pop. 10,041. 

Bailey (ba'li), the name given to the 
courts of a castle formed by the spaces 
between the circuits of walls or defences 
which surrounded the keep. 

Bailey, or Baily, Nathaniel, an English 
lexicographer, school teacher at Stepney, 
and author of several educational works. 
His dictionary, published in 1721, passed 
through a great many editions. 

Bailey, Philip James, English poet, born 
at Basford, Nottingham, 1816, and called 
to the bar in 1840. Published Festus, his 
best work, in 1839; The Mystic, 1855; The 
Age, 1858; and The Universal Hymn, 1867. 

Bailie, Baillie, a municipal officer or 
magistrate in Scotland, corresponding to an 
alderman in England. The criminal juris¬ 
diction of the provost and bailies of royal 
burghs extends to breaches of the peace, 
drunkenness, adulteration of articles of diet, 
thefts not of an aggravated character, and 
other offences of a less serious nature. 

Bailiff, a civil officer or functionary, sub¬ 
ordinate to some one else. There are several 
kinds of bailiffs, whose offices widely differ, 
but all agree in this, that the keeping or 
protection of something belongs to them. 
In England the sheriff is the monarch’s 
bailiff? apd his county is a bailiwick, The 


- BAILLIE. 

name is also applied to the chief magis¬ 
trates of some towns, to keepers of royal 
castles, as of Dover, to persons having the 
conservation of the peace in hundreds and 
in some special jurisdictions, as Westmin¬ 
ster, and to the returning-officers in the 
same. But the officials commonly desig¬ 
nated by this name are the bailiffs of 
sheriffs, or sheriffs’ officers, who execute 
processes, &c. 

Bailleul (ba-yeul), an ancient French 
town, department of Nord, near the Belgian 
frontier, about 19 m. west of Lille. Has 
manufactures of woollen and cotton stuffs, 
lace, leather, &c. Pop. 12,828.—A village 
of same name in dep. Orne gave its name 
to the Baliol family. 

Baillie, Joanna, a Scottish authoress, 
born at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, in 1762; 
died at Hampstead, 1851. She removed in 
early life to London, where her brother, 
Matthew Baillie, was settled as a physician. 
Here in 1798 she published her first work, 
entitled A Series of Plays, in which she 
attempted to delineate the stronger passions 
by making each passion the subject of a 
tragedy and a comedy. The series was 
followed up by a second volume in 1802, 
and a third in 1812. A second series ap¬ 
peared in 1836, and a complete edition of 
her whole dramatic works in 1850. She 
also published a volume of miscellaneous 
poetry, including songs, in 1841. Her only 
plays performed on the stage were a tragedy 
entitled the Family Legend, brought out 
at Edinburgh under the patronage of Sir 
Walter Scott; and De Montfort, brought out 
by John Kemble. 

Baillie, Matthew, M.D., physician and 
anatomist, brother of the preceding, was 
born 1761 at Shotts, Lanarkshire; died at 
Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in 1823. In 
1773 he was placed at the University of 
Glasgow. He afterwards studied anatomy 
under his maternal uncles John and William 
Hunter, and entered Oxford, where he gra¬ 
duated as M.D. In 1783 he succeeded his 
uncle as lecturer on anatomy in London, 
where he acquired a high reputation as a 
teacher and demonstrator, having also a 
large practice. In 1810 he was appointed 
physician to George III. His work on The 
Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Im¬ 
portant Parts of the Human Body gave him 
a European reputation. 

Baillie, Robert, an eminent Scottish 
Presbyterian clergyman, was bora at Glas¬ 
gow in 1599, died 1662. Though educated 

342 



BAILMENT. 


BA1LLIE 


and ordained as an Episcopalian, he resisted 
the attempt of Archbishop Laud to introduce 
his Book of Common Prayer into Scotland, 
and joined the Presbyterian party. In 1638 
he represented the presbytery of Irvine in 
the General Assembly at Glasgow, which 
dissolved Episcopacy in Scotland. In 1640 
he was selected to go to London, with 
other commissioners, to prepare charges 
against Archbishop Laud for his innova¬ 
tions upon the Scottish Church. Of this, 
and almost all the other proceedings of his 
public life, he has left a minute account in 
his letters and journals, which form a most 
valuable collection for the history of his 
time. In 1642 he was appointed professor 
of divinity at Glasgow. He was a member 
of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 
and attended its sittings from 1643-46. 
After the Restoration, though made prin¬ 
cipal of his college through court patronage, 
he did not hesitate to express his dissatisfac¬ 
tion with the re-introduction of Episcopacy. 

Baillie, Robert, of Jerviswood, in Lan¬ 
arkshire, a Scottish patriot of the reign of 
Charles II. He brought himself into notice 
by opposing the tyrannical measures of 
Archbishop Sharpe against the Noncon¬ 
formists, for which he was fined 6000 merks 
and imprisoned for four months. In 1683 
he went to London in furtherance of a 
scheme of emigration to South Carolina 
taken up by a number of Scottish gentle¬ 
men, as being the only way of escaping the 
tyranny of the government. He became 
associated with Monmouth, Sydney, Rus¬ 
sell, and the rest of that party, and was 
charged with complicity in the Rye-house 
plot. After a long imprisonment, during 
which vain attempts were made to obtain 
evidence against him, he was brought before 
the Court of Justiciary (23d Dec. 1684), 
was found guilty, and condemned to be 
executed that afternoon. 

Bailly (ba-ye), Jean Sylvain, French 
astronomer and statesman, born at Paris, 
1736. After some youthful essays in verse 
he was induced by Lacaille to devote himself 
to astronomy, and on the death of the latter 
in 1753, being admitted to the Academy 
of Sciences, he published a reduction of La- 
caille’s observations on the zodiacal stars. 
In 1764 he competed ably but unsuccessfully 
for the Academy prize offered for an essay 
upon Jupiter’s satellites, Lagrange being 
his opponent; and in 1771 he published a 
treatise on the light reflected by these satel¬ 
lites, In the meantime he had won distinc¬ 

343 


tion as a man of letters by his eulogiums 
on Pierre Corneille, Leibnitz, Molfere, and 
others; and the same qualities of style shown 
by these were maintained in his History of 
Astronomy (1775-87), his most extensive 
work. In 1784 the French Academy 



Jean Sylvain Bailly. 


elected him a member. The revolution 
drew him into public life. Paris chose him, 
May 12, 1789, first deputy of the tiers-etat , 
and in the assembly itself he was made first 
president, a post occupied by him on June 
20, 1789, in the session of the Tennis Court, 
when the deputies swore never to separate 
till they had given France a new constitu¬ 
tion. As mayor of Paris his moderation 
and impartial enforcement of the law failed 
to commend themselves to the people, and 
his forcible suppression of mob violence, 
July 17, 1791, aroused a storm which led 
to his resignation and retreat to Nantes. 
In 1793 he attempted to join Laplace at 
Melun, but was recognized and sent to 
Pai'is, where he was condemned by the re¬ 
volutionary tribunal, and executed on Nov. 
12th. 

Bailment, in law, is the delivery of a 
chattel or thing to a person in trust, either 
for the use of the bailer or person delivering, 
or for that of the bailee or person to whom 
it is delivered. A bailment always sup¬ 
poses the subject to be delivered only for a 
limited time, at the expiration of which it 
must be redelivered to the bailer, the respon¬ 
sibility of the bailee being dependent, in 
some degree, upon the contract on which 
the bailment is made. Pledging and letting 
for hire are species of bailment, 



BAILY-BAIRD. 


Baily, Edward Hodges, an English 
sculptor, born at Bristol 1788, died at Lon¬ 
don 1867. He became a pupil of Flaxman 
in 1807, gained the Academy Gold Medal 
in 1811, and was elected R.A. in 1821. 
Principal works: Eve at the Fountain; Eve 
Listening to the Voice; Maternal Affection; 
Girl Preparing for the Bath; The Graces, 
&c. The bas-reliefs on the south side of the 
Marble Arch, Hyde Park, the statue of 
Nelson on the monument, and various other 
public works, were from his chisel. 

Baily, Francis, astronomer, born in 
Berkshire, 1774; settled in London as a 
stockbroker in 1802. While thus actively 
engaged he published Tables for the Pur¬ 
chasing and Renewing of Leases, the Doc¬ 
trine of Interest and Annuities, the Doctrine 
of Life Annuities and Assurances, and an epi¬ 
tome of universal history. On retiring from 
business with an ample fortune in 1825 he 
turned his attention to astronomy, became 
one of the founders of the Astronomical 
Society, contributed to its Transactions, and 
in 1835 published a life of Flamsteed. He 
died in 1844. 

Baily’s Beads, a phenomenon attending 
eclipses of the sun, the unobscured edge of 
which appears discontinuous and broken 
immediately before and after the moment 
of complete obscuration. It is classed as an 
effect of irradiation. 

Bain, Alexander, writer on mental 
philosophy and education, was born at Aber¬ 
deen in 1818. He was educated at Maris- 
chal College (then a separate university), 
Aberdeen ; was for some years a deputy pro¬ 
fessor in the university; subsequently held 
official posts in London; and in 1860 w r as 
appointed professor of logic and English in 
Aberdeen University, a post which he held 
till his resignation in 1881. His most im¬ 
portant works are: The Senses and the 
Intellect (1855); the Emotions and the 
Will (1859), together forming a complete 
exposition of the human mind; Mental and 
Moral Science (1868); Logic, Deductive 
and Inductive (1870); Mind and Body 
(1873); Education as a Science (1879); 
James Mill, a Biography (1881); John 
Stuart Mill, a Criticism with Personal Re¬ 
collections (1882); besides an English Gram¬ 
mar, Manual of English Composition and 
Rhetoric, &c. 

Bairam (bi'ram), the Easter of the Mo¬ 
hammedans, which follows immediately after 
the Ramadan or Lent (a month of fasting), 
and lasts three days. This feast during the 


course of thirty-three years makes a com¬ 
plete circuit of all the months and seasons, 
as the Turks reckon by lunar years. Sixty 
days after this first great Bairam begins 
the lesser Bairam. They are the only two 
feasts prescribed by the Mohammedan re¬ 
ligion. 

Baird, Sir David, a distinguished British 
commander, was born in Edinburghshire in 
1757, and entered the army 1772. Having 
been promoted to a lieutenancy in 1778 he 



Sir David Baird. 


sailed for India, distinguished himself as a 
captain in the war against Hyder Ali, was 
wounded and taken prisoner, and confined 
in the fortress of Seringapatam for nearly 
four years. He and his fellow-prisoners 
were treated with great barbarity, and many 
of them died or were put to death, but at 
last (in 1784) all that survived were set at 
liberty. After his release he received, in 
1787, his majority, and in 1791 joined the 
army under Cornwallis as lieutenant colonel, 
and was appointed to the command of a bri¬ 
gade in the war against Tippoo. After much 
hard service he received a colonelcy in 1795, 
went in 1797 to the Cape of Good Hope as 
brigadier-general, and in 1798, on his ap¬ 
pointment as major-general, returned to 
India. In 1799 he commanded the storm¬ 
ing party at the assault of Seringapatam, 
and, in requital, was presented with the state 
sword of Tippoo Saib. Being appointed in 
1800 to command an expedition to Egypt, 
he landed at Kosseir in June, 1801, crossed 
the desert, and, embarking on the Nile, 
descended to Cairo, and thence to Alex¬ 
andria, which he reached a few days before 

344 



BAIRD — 

it surrendered to General Hutchinson. Next 
year he returned to India, but being soon 
after superseded by Sir Arthur Wellesley 
(Wellington), he sailed for Britain, where he 
was knighted and made K.C.B. With the 
rank of lieutenant-general he commanded an 
expedition in 1805 to the Cape of Good Hope, 
and in 1806, after defeating the Dutch, he 
received the surrender of the colony. He 
commanded a division at the siege of Copen¬ 
hagen, and after a short period of service in 
Ireland sailed with 10,000 men for Corunna, 
where he formed a junction w r ith Sir John 
Moore. He commanded the first division of 
Moore's army, and in the battle of Corunna 
lost his left arm. By the death of Sir John 
Moore Sir David succeeded to the chief com¬ 
mand, receiving for the. fourth time the 
thanks of Parliament, and a baronetcy. In 
1814 he was made a general. He died in 
1829. 

Baird, Spencer Fullerton, American 
naturalist, born 1823, died 1887. He was 
long assistant secretary, and latterly secre¬ 
tary, of the Smithsonian Institution, Wash¬ 
ington, and was also chief government com¬ 
missioner of fish and fisheries. He wrote 
much on natural history, his chief works 
being The Birds of N. America (in con¬ 
junction with John Cassin); The Mammals 
of N. America; Review of American Birds 
in the Smithsonian Institution; and (with 
Messrs. Brewer and Ridgeway), History 
of N. American Birds. 

Baireuth (bl'roit), a well-built and plea¬ 
santly-situated town of Bavaria, on the Red 
Main, 41 miles north-east of Niirnberg. 
The principal edifices, besides churches, are 
the old and the new palace, the opera-house, 
the gymi asium, and the national theatre, 
constructed after the design of the composer 
Wagner, and opened in 1876 with a grand 
performance of his tetralogy of the Nibel- 
ungen Ring. Industries: cotton spinning, 
sugar refining, musical instruments, sewing- 
machines, leather, brewing, &c. There is a 
monument to Jean Paul F. Richter, who 
died here. Pop. 22,072. 

Baius, or De Bay, Michael, Catholic 
theologian, was born 1513, in Hainaut, edu¬ 
cated at Louvain, made professor of theology 
there in 1563 or 1564, and chosen a mem¬ 
ber of the Council of Trent. Leaving the 
scholastic method, he founded systematic 
theology directly upon the Bible and the 
Christian fathers, of whom he particularly 
followed St. Augustine. His doctrines of 
original sin and of salvation by grace 


BAJOCCO. 

led to his persecution as a heretic by the 
old Scotists, and the Jesuits, who suc¬ 
ceeded in obtaining a Papal bull in 1567, 
condemning the doctrines imputed to him. 
Baius, however, remained in the possession 
of his dignities, was appointed in 1578 
chancellor of Louvain University; and the 
King ^f Spain even conferred upon him the 
office of inquisitor-general in the Nether¬ 
lands. He died in 1589. His Augustinian 
views descended to the Jansenists, while his 
doctrine of pure undivided love to God 
formed the staple of Quietism. 

Baize, a sort of coarse woollen fabric with 
a rough nap, now generally used for linings, 
and mostly green or red in colour. 

Baja (ba/ya), a market town of Hungary, 
district of Bacs, on the Danube, with a 
trade in grain and wine, and a large annual 
hog fair. Pop. 19,241. 

Bajaderes. See Bayaderes. 

Bajazet (ba-ya-zet'), or Bayasid, I., 
Turkish emperor, who, in 1389, having 
strangled his brother Jacob, succeeded his 
father Murad or Amurath, who fell in the 
battle of Cassova againstthe Servians. From 
the rapidity of his conquests he received the 
name of Ilderim, the Lightning. In three 
years he subjected Bulgaria, part of Servia, 
Macedonia, Thessaly, and the states of Asia 
Minor, and besieged Constantinople for ten 
years, defeating Sigismund and the allied 
Hungarians, Poles, and French, in 1395. 
The attack of Timur (Tamerlane) on Natolia, 
in 1400, saved the Greek Empire, Bajazet 
being defeated and taken prisoner by him 
near Ancyra, Galatia, 1402. The story of 
his being carried about in a cage by Timur 
is improbable; but Bajazet died in 1409, 
in Timur's camp, in Caramania. His succes¬ 
sor was Solinian I. 

Bajazet II. succeeded his father, Mo¬ 
hammed II., sultan of the Turks, in 1481. 
He increased the Turkish Empire by con¬ 
quests on the N.w. and in the E., took Le- 
panto, Modon, and Durazzo in a war 
against the Venetians, and ravaged the 
coasts of the Christian states on the Medi¬ 
terranean, to revenge the expulsion of the 
Moors from Spain. Having abdicated in 
favour of his younger son Selim he died 
on his way to a residence near Adrianople 
in 1513. He did much for the improve¬ 
ment of his empire and the promotion of 
the sciences. 

Bajimont’s Roll. See Bagimont’s Roll. 

Bajocco, or Baiocco (ba-yok'o), was a 
copper coin in the Papal States, the hun- 



BAJUS 


BAKING. 


dredth part of a scudo, or rather more than 
a halfpenny. The name was also given in 
Sicily to the Neapolitan grano, the hun¬ 
dredth part of the ducato 80 cts. 

Bajus. See Baius. 

Bajza (boi'za), Anton, Hungarian lyric 
poet, historian, and critic, born 1804, died 
1858. As contributor and editor of various 
periodicals he played an important part in 
the development of modern Hungarian litera¬ 
ture and drama. A volume of his poems, of 
high merit, was published in 1835. He also 
translated a collection of foreign dramas, 
and edited a series of historical works. 

Bakalaha'ri, a Bechuana tribe inhabit¬ 
ing the Kalahari Desert, S. Africa. 

Bak'arganj, a maritime district and town 
in Bengal; chief rivers: Ganges, Brahma¬ 
putra, and Meghna. Area, 3649 sq. miles. 
Pop. 1,900,889. The town now lies in ruins. 
Pop. 7060. 

Bakau (ba'kou), a town of Rou mania, on 
the Bistritza. Pop. 13,118. 

Bakchisarai (bak-chi-sa-rl'), or Bagtche- 
SERAI (biig-che-se-rl; Turkish, ‘Garden Pa¬ 
lace’), an ancient town of Russia, in the 
Crimea, picturesquely situated at the bot¬ 
tom of a narrow valley, hemmed in by 
precipices. It contains the palace of the 
ancient Crimean khans, restored by the 
Russian government. Pop. 11,448. 

Baker, Sir Richard, an English his¬ 
torian, born in Kent in 1568, educated at 
Oxford, knighted in 1603 by James I., and 
in 1620 appointed high sheriff of Oxford¬ 
shire, where he had estates. Having given 
security for a debt incurred by his wife’s 
family, he was thrown into Fleet Prison, 
where, after continuing some years, he died 
in 1645. During his imprisonment he wrote 
some devotional books and his Chronicle 
of the Kings of England, first published 
in 1641, and afterwards continued by Ed¬ 
ward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, and 
others—a work of great popularity in its 
day, though of no permanent value. 

Baker, Sir Samuel White, a distin¬ 
guished English traveller, born in 1821. 
He resided some years in Ceylon; in 1861 
began his African travels, which lasted 
several years, in the Upper Nile regions, 
and resulted, among other discoveries, in 
that of Albert Nyanza lake in 1864, and of 
the exit of the White Nile from it. In 
Africa he encountered Speke and Grant 
after their discovery of the Victoria Nyanza. 
On his return home he was received with 
great honour and was knighted, In 1869 


he returned to Africa as head of an expedi¬ 
tion sent by the Khedive of Egypt to annex 
and open up to trade a large part of the 
newly explored country, being raised to the 
dignity of pasha. He returned in 1873, 
having finished his work, and was succeeded 
by the celebrated Gordon. Since then he 
has travelled much. His writings include : 
The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon ; Eight 
Years’ Wanderings in Ceylon; The Albert 
Nyanza, &c.; The Nile Tributaries of Abys¬ 
sinia ; Ismailia: a Narrative of the Expedi¬ 
tion to Central Africa; Cyprus as I saw it 
in 1879; also, Cast up by the Sea, a story 
published in 1869. 

Baker, Thomas, antiquary, born 1656, 
educated at Cambridge. As a non-juror he 
lost his living at Long-Newton in 1690, and 
was compelled to resign his fellowship on 
the accession of George I., but continued to 
reside at St. John’s College till his death in 
1740. His Reflections on Learning (1709- 
10) went through seven editions. He left 
in MS. forty-two folio volumes of an 
“Atheme Cantabrigienses,” from which a 
“History of St. John’s College” was edited 
by Professor Mayor in 1869. 

Bakewell, an ancient market-town, Eng¬ 
land, county of Derby, between Buxton and 
Matlock, possessing a fine Gothic church, 
a chalybeate spring, a cotton-mill erected by 
Arkwright, and a large marble-cutting in¬ 
dustry. Pop. 1891, 2748. 

Bakewell, Robert, an English agricul¬ 
turist, celebrated for his improvements in 
the breeding of sheep, cattle, and horses, 
was born in Leicestershire in 1725, and 
died in 1795. He commenced experiments 
in breeding sheep about 1755, upon his 
father’s farm at Dishley, and for fifty years 
devoted himself to the acquisition and dif¬ 
fusion of information upon the subject. He 
was the originator of the new Leicestershire 
breed of sheep, which have since been so 
well known, and also of a breed of cattle 
that had great repute in their day. Various 
improvements in farm management were 
also introduced by him. 

Bakhmut. See Bachmut. 

Bakhuisen. See Backhuysen. 

Baking, a term used in various senses. 
For the baking of bread, see Bread. A 
common application of the term is to a mode 
of cooking food in a close oven, baking in 
this case being opposed to roasting or broil¬ 
ing, in which an open fire is used. The oven 
should not be too close, but ought to be 
properly ventilated. Baking is also applied 

346 




BAKING POWDER-BALAGARH. 


to the hardening of earthenware or porcelain 
by fire. 

Baking Powder, a mixture of bicarbon¬ 
ate of soda and tartaric acid, usually with 
some flour added. The water of the dough 
causes the liberation of carbonic acid, which 
makes the bread ‘rise.’ 

Bakony (ba-kon'ye) Wald, a thickly - 
wooded mountain range dividing the Hun¬ 
garian plains, famous for the herds of swine 
fed on its mast. 

Bakshish', an Eastern term for a present 
or gratuity. A demand for bakshish meets 
travellers in the East everywhere from Tur¬ 
key and Egypt to Hindustan. 

Baku (ba-ko'), a Russian port on the 
western shore of the Caspian, occupying 
part of the peninsula of Apsheron. The 
naphtha or petroleum springs of Baku have 
long been known; and the Field of Fire, so 
called from emitting inflammable gases, 
has long been a place of pilgrimage with 
the G uebres or Fire-worshippers. Recently, 
from the development of the petroleum in¬ 
dustry, Baku has greatly increased, and is 
now a large and flourishing town. About 
400 oil-wells are in operation, producing im¬ 
mense quantities of petroleum, much of 
which is led direct in pipes from the wells 
to the refineries in Baku, and it is intended 
to lay a pipe for its conveyance all the way 
to the Black Sea at Batoum, which is al¬ 
ready connected with Baku by railway. 
Some of the wells have had such an outflow 
of oil as to be unmanageable, and the Baku 
petroleum now competes successfully with 
any other in the markets of the world. 
Baku is the station of the Caspian fleet, 
is strongly fortified, and has a large ship¬ 
ping trade. Pop. in 1870, 12,400; in 1888, 
86,611. 

Baku'nin, Michael, Russian socialist, the 
founder of Nihilism, born 1814 of rich and 
noble family, entered the army, but threw up 
his commission after two years’ service, and 
studied philosophy at Moscow, with his 
friends Herzen, Turgenieff, Granowski (his¬ 
torian), and Belinski (critic). Having 
adopted Hegel’s system as the basis of a new 
revolution, he went in 1841 to Berlin, and 
thence to Dresden, Geneva, and Paris, as the 
propagandist of anarchism. Wherever he 
went he was influential for disturbance, and 
after undergoing imprisonment in various 
states, was handed over to Russia in 1851 
by Austria, imprisoned for five years, and 
finally sent to Siberia. Escaping thence 
through Japan, he joined Herzen in Lon¬ 

347 


don on the staff of the Kolokol. His ex¬ 
treme views, however, ruined the paper and 
led to a quarrel with M*arx and the Inter¬ 
national; and having fallen into disrepute 
with his own party in Russia, he died sud¬ 
denly and almost alone at Berne, in 1878. 
He demanded the entire abolition of the 
state as a state, the absolute equalization of 
individuals, and the extirpation of here¬ 
ditary rights and of religion, his conception 
of the next stage of social progress being 
purely negative and annihilatory. 

Bala, a lake 4 miles long, and a small 
town of N. Wales, in Merionethshire. 

Balaam (ba'lam), a heathen seer, invited 
by Balak, king of Moab, to curse the Israel¬ 
ites, but compelled by miracle to bless them 
instead (Numbers xxii.-xxiv.). In another 
account he is represented as aiding in the 
perversion of the Israelites to the worship 
of Baal, and as being, therefore, slain in the 
Midianitish war (Numbers xxxi.; Joshua 
xiii.). He is the subject of many rabbinical 
fables, the Targumists and Talmudists 
regarding him, as most of the fathers did, 
in the light of an impious and godless 
man. 

Bala Beds, a local deposit, in the Bala 
district, North Wales, consisting of slates, 
grits, sandstones, and limestones, there being 
two limestones separated by sandy and 
slaty rocks about 1400 ft. thick. They con¬ 
tain trilobites of many species, as well as 
other fossils. The lower Bala limestone 
(25 ft. thick) may be traced over a large 
area in North Wales. 

Balachong', an oriental condiment, com¬ 
posed of small fishes, or shrimps, pounded 
up with salt and spices and then dried. 

Balae'na, the genus which includes the 
Greenland or right whale, type of the 
family Bahenid®, or whale-bone whales. 

Balse'niceps (‘whale-head’), a genus of 
wading birds belonging to the Soudan, inter¬ 
mediate between the herons and storks, and 
characterized by an enormous bill, broad 
and swollen, giving the only known species 
(B. rex), also called shoe-bird, a peculiar 
appearance. It feeds on fishes, water-snakes, 
carrion, &c., and makes its nest in reeds or 
grass adjoining water. The bill is yellow, 
blotched with dark brown, the general colour 
of the plumage dusky gray, the head, neck, 
and breast slaty, the legs blackish. 

Balsenop'tera, the genus to which the 
rorqual whale belongs. See Rorqual. 

Balagarh (ba-la-gar'),townof Hindustan, 
in the Punjab. Pop. 11,233. 



BALAKLAVA-BALANCE. 


Balaklava (ba-la-kla'va), a small seaport 
in the Crimea, 8 miles s.s.e. Sevastopol, 
consisting for the most part of houses 
perched upon heights, with an old Genoese 
castle on an almost inaccessible elevation. 
The harbour has a very narrow entrance, 
and though deep, is not capacious. In the 
Crimean war it was captured by the British, 
and a heroically fought battle took place 


here (Oct. 25, 1854), ending in the repulse 
of the Russians by the British. The “charge 
of the Light Brigade” was at this battle. 

Balalaika, a musical instrument of very 
ancient Slavonic origin, common among the 
Russians and Tartars. It is a narrow, 
shallow guitar with only two strings. 

Bal'ance, an instrument employed for 
determining the quantity of any substance 



Balaklava Harbour. 


equal to a given weight. Balances are of 
various forms; in that most commonly 
used a horizontal beam rests so as to turn 
easily upon a certain point known as the 
centre of motion. From the extremities of 
the beam, called the centres of suspension, 
hang the scales; and a slender metal tongue 
midway between them, and directly over 
the centre of motion, indicates when the 
beam is level. The characteristics of a ffood 

o 

balance are: 1st, that the beam should rest 
in a horizontal position when the scales are 
either empty or loaded with equal weights; 
2d, that a very small addition of weight 
put into either scale should cause the beam 
to deviate from the level, which property is 
denominated the sensibility of tbe balance; 
3d, that when the beam is deflected from 
the horizontal position by inequality of the 


weights in the scales, it should have a ten¬ 
dency speedily to restore itself and come 
to rest in the level, which property is called 
the stability of the balance. To secure these 
qualities tbe arms of the beam should be 
exactly similar, equal in weight and length, 
and as long as possible; the centres of 
gravity and suspension should be in one 
straight line, and the centre of motion im¬ 
mediately above the centre of gravity; and 
the centre of motion and the centres of sus¬ 
pension should cause as little friction as 
possible. The centre of motion ought to be 
a knife-edge; and if the balance requires 
to be very delicate, the centres of suspen¬ 
sion ought to be knife-edges also. If the 
balance have no tendency to one position 
more than another, when the scales are 
either loaded, empty, or off altogether, it is 

348 

































BALANCE OF POWER - 

a proof that the centres of gravity and 
motion coincide, and the remedy is to lower 
the centre of gravity. If the beam is dis¬ 
turbed by a small addition of weight to 
either scale, and exhibits no tendency to 
resume the horizontal position, we may 
infer that the centre of gravity is above the 
centre of motion. If it require a consider¬ 
able excess of weight to deflect the beam 
from the level, we may infer either that 
there is too much friction at the centre of 
motion, or that the centre of gravity is too 
low. If two weights are found to be in 
equipoise, one being in each scale, and if, 
when that which is in the one scale is put 
into the other, there is no longer equili¬ 
brium, then we may infer that the arms of 
the beam are of unequal lengths. For pur¬ 
poses of accuracy, balances have occasion¬ 
ally means of raising or depressing the 
centre of gravity, of regulating the length 
of the arms, &c., and the whole apparatus 
is not unfrequendy inclosed in a glass case, 
to prevent the heat from expanding the 
arms unequally, or currents of air from dis¬ 
turbing the equilibrium. 

Of the other forms of balance, the Roman 
balance, or steelyard , consists of a lever 
moving freely upon a suspended fulcrum, 
the shorter arm of the lever having a 
scale or pan attached to it, and the longer 
arm, along which slides a weight, being 
graduated to indicate quantities. It is 
commonly used for weighing loadedcarts, for 
luggage at railway-stations, &c. A variety 
of this, the Danish balance, has the weight 
fixed at the end of the lever, the fulcrum 
being movable along the graduated index. 
The spring-balance shows the weight of 
articles by the extent to which they draw 
out or compress a spiral spring. It is of 
service where a high degree of exactness is 
not required, and finds application in the 
dynamometer for measuring the force of 
machinery. An extremely ingenious bal¬ 
ance, used in the Mint and the Bank of 
England for weighing ‘blanks’ and sover¬ 
eigns, distributes them automatically into 
three compartments according as they are 
light, heavy, or the exact weight. 

Balance of Power, a political principle 
which first came to be recognized in modern 
Europe in the sixteenth century, though it 
appears to have been also acted on by the 
Greeks in ancient times, in preserving the 
relations between their different states. 
The object in maintaining the balance of 
power is to secure the general independence 

349 


-BALANCE OF TRADE. 

of nations as a whole, by preventing the 
aggressive attempts of individual states to 
extend their territory and sway at the 
expense of weaker countries. The first 
European monarch whose ambitious designs 
induced a combination of other states to 
counteract them, was the Emperor Charles 
V.; similar coalitions being formed in the 
end of the seventeenth century, when the 
ambition of Louis XIV. excited the fears of 
Europe, and a century later against the 
exorbitant power and aggressive schemes of 
the first Napoleon. More recently still we 
have the instance of the Crimean war, 
entered into to check the ambition of 
Russia Of late years there has been a 
marked tendency among British politicians 
to decry and impugn the principle of the 
balance of power, as calculated only to pro¬ 
pagate a system of mutual hostility, and 
retard the cause of progress, by the expen¬ 
diture both of money and life thus occa¬ 
sioned. There can be no doubt, however, 
that to the carrying out of this principle 
the independence of some of the smaller 
and weaker European states is fairly at¬ 
tributable. 

Balance of Trade, the difference between 
the stated money values of the exports and 
imports of a country. The balance is errone¬ 
ously said to be ‘in favour’ of a country 
when the value of the exports is in excess 
of that of the imports and ‘ against it ’ when 
the imports are in excess of the exports. 
The phrases date from the days of the mer¬ 
cantile system, the characteristic doctrine 
of which alleged the desirability of regu¬ 
lating commerce with a view to amassing 
treasure by exporting produce largely, im¬ 
porting little merchandise in return, and re¬ 
ceiving the balance in bullion. In certain 
conceivable political and industrial condi¬ 
tions this may have had beneficial results; 
but its importance was greatly over-esti¬ 
mated, and the state of this balance came 
to be regarded as an invariable criterion of 
the industrial condition of a country. The 
false analogy of the successful merchant 
who gains more than he spends became the 
basis of popular reasoning, the products of 
a country being mistakenly identified with 
its exports, its consumption with its impor¬ 
tation. It is now generally recognized that 
if bullion be exported from a country it is 
because it is at the time the cheapest com¬ 
modity available for export; and further, 
that there are certain natural limits to its 
undue exportation, in that the increased 



BALANUS- 

scarcity of money is attended with a fall 
in the money-value of other commodities, 
which thus in turn become preferable ob¬ 
jects of exportation, while bullion flows 
back. The excess of the value of imports 
over that of exports, which is regarded by 
some as an adverse and alarming symptom 
in British trade, is in large part readily ac¬ 
counted for on the ground of shipping re¬ 
ceipts, insurance returns, interest on capital 
employed in foreign trade, merchants’ pro¬ 
fits, and the income derived from foreign 
investments. 

Bab anus (‘acorn-shells’), a genus of ses¬ 
sile cirripeds, family Balanidae, of which 
colonies are to be found on rocks at low 
water, on timbers, crustaceans, shells of mol- 
lusca, &c. They 
differ from the bar¬ 
nacles in having a 
symmetrical shell, 
and being destitute 
of a flexible stalk. 

The shell consists 
of six plates, with 
an operculum of 
four valves. They 
pass through a lar¬ 
val state in which 
they are not fixed, 
moving by means 
of swimming feet 
which disappear in the final state. All the 
Balanidae are hermaphrodite. A S. Ame¬ 
rican species (Baldnus psittacus) is eaten on 
the coast of Chili, the Balanus tintinnabu- 
lum by the Chinese. The old Roman epi¬ 
cures esteemed the larger species. 

Balapur', town of India in Akola district, 
Berar, with strong fort and fine pavilion of 
black stone. Pop. 11,244. 

Bal 'as, a name used to distinguish the 
rose-coloured species of ruby from the ruby 
proper. 

Balasor', a seaport town, Hindustan, pre¬ 
sidency of Bengal, province of Orissa, head¬ 
quarters of a district and subdivision bear¬ 
ing the same name. It carries on a con¬ 
siderable traffic with Calcutta. Pop. 20,265. 

Bala'ta, a gum yielded by Mimusops Ba- 
lata, a tree growing abundantly in British, 
French, and Dutch Guiana, Honduras and 
Brazil, obtained in a milky state by ‘tap¬ 
ping’ the tree, and hardening to a substance 
like leather. Used for similar purposes to 
india-rubber, and in the U. States chewed 
as a masticatory. 

Bal'aton, or Plattensee, a lake of Hun- 


- BALBOA. 

gary, 55 miles s.w. of Pesth; length, 50 
miles; breadth, 3 to 10 miles; area, about 
390 squares miles. Of its 32 feeders the 
Szala is the largest, and the lake communi¬ 
cates with the Danube by the rivers Sio and 
Sarviz. It abounds with a species of perch. 

Balbec. See Baalbek. 

Balbi, Adrien, geographer and statisti¬ 
cian, born at Venice in 1782. In 1808 his 
first work on geography procured his ap¬ 
pointment as professor of geography in the 
College of San Michele at Murano, and he 
became in 1811 professor of natural philo¬ 
sophy in the Lyceum at Fermo. In 1820 
he proceeded to Portugal, and collected there 
materials for his Essai Statistique sur le 
Royaume de Portugal et d’Algarve and 
Varies Politiques et Statistiques de la 
Monarchic Portugaise, both published in 
1822 at Paris, where he resided till 1832. 
He then settled in Padua, where he died in 
1848. Balbi’s admirable AbrtSg^ de G£o- 
graphie was written at PJHs, and translated 
into the principal European languages. 

Balbi, Gasparo, a Venetian dealer in 
precious stones, born about the middle of 
the sixteenth century, who travelled first 
to Aleppo and thence down the Euphrates 
and Tigris to the Malabar coast, sailing 
finally for Pegu, where he remained for two 
years. His \ iaggio all’ Indie Orientale, 
published on his return to Venice in 1590, 
contains the earliest account of India be¬ 
yond the Ganges. 

Balbo, Cesare, Italian author and states¬ 
man, born 1789 at Turin. After holding 
one or two posts under the patronage of 
Napoleon, he devoted himself to history, 
publishing a history of Italy prior to the 
period of Charlemagne, a compendium of 
Italian history, &c. His Speranze d’ltalia 
(1843), a statement of the political condition 
of Italy, and of the practicable ideals to be 
kept in view, gave him a wide reputation. 
He died in 1853. 

Balbo'a, Vasco Nunez de, one of the 
early Spanish adventurers in the New World; 
born 1475. Having dissipated his fortune, 
he went to America, and was at Darien with 
the expedition of Francisco de Enciso in 
1510. An insurrection placed him at the 
head of the colony, but rumours of a wes¬ 
tern ocean and of the wealth of Peru led 
him to cross the isthmus. On Sept. 25, 
1513, he saw for the first time the Pacific, 
and after annexing it to Spain, and acquir¬ 
ing information about Peru, returned to 
Darien. Here he found himself supplanted 

350 



Group of 

Baldnus tintinnabulum 



BALBRIGGAN — 

by a new governor, P§drarias Davila, with 
much consequent grievance on the one side, 
and much jealousy on the other. Balboa 
submitted, however, and in the following 
year was appointed viceroy of the South 
Sea. Davila was appai'ently reconciled to 
him, and gave him his daughter in marriage, 
but shortly after, in 1517, had him beheaded 
on a charge of intent to rebel. Pizarro, 
who afterwards completed the discovery of 
Peru, served under Balboa. 

Balbriggan, a seaport and favourite water¬ 
ing-place, Ireland, county of Dublin; cele¬ 
brated for its hosiery. Pop. 2443. 

Bal'cony, in architecture, is a gallery pro¬ 
jecting from the outer wall of a building, 
supported by columns or brackets, and sur¬ 
rounded by a balustrade. Balconies were 
not used in Greek and Roman buildings, and 
in the East the roof of the house has for 
centuries served similar purposes on a larger 
scale. Balconies properly so styled came 
into fashion in Italy in the middle ages, and 
were apparently introduced into Britain in 
the sixteenth century. 

Bal'dachin (-kin; It. baldachino), a can¬ 
opy or tent-like covering of any material, 



Baldachin, Church of S. Ambrose, Milan. 


either suspended from the roof, fastened to 
the wall, or supported on pillars over altars, 
thrones, pulpits, beds, portals, &c. Portable 
baldachins of rich materials were formerly 
used to shield the heads of dignitaries in 
processions, and are still so used in the pro¬ 
cessions of the Catholic Church, and in the 
East. The enormous bronze baldachin of 

351 


BALDOVINETTI. 

Bernini placed over the tomb of the apos¬ 
tles in St. Peter’s at Rome is one of the 
most famous, though surpassed in beauty 
by many in other European cathedrals and 
churches. 

Balder, or Baldur, a Scandinavian divin¬ 
ity, represented as the son of Odin and 
Frigga, beautiful, wise, amiable, and beloved 
by all the gods. His mother took an oath 
from every creature, and even from every 
inanimate object, that they would not harm 
Balder, but omitted the mistletoe. Balder 
was therefore deemed invulnerable, and the 
other gods in sport flung stones and shot 
arrows at him without harming him. But 
the evil god Loki fashioned an arrow from 
the mistletoe and got Balder’s blind brother 
Hbder to shoot it, himself guiding his aim. 
Balder fell dead, pierced to the heart, to the 
deep grief of all the gods. He is believed 
to be a personification of the brightness and 
beneficence of the sun. See Northern My¬ 
thology. 

Baldi, Bernardino, mathematician, theo¬ 
logian, geographer, historian, poet, &c., born 
at Urbino 1533; studied at Padua; became 
abbot of Guastalla. He knew upwards of 
twelve languages, and is said to have writ¬ 
ten over a hundred works, most of which 
remain in MS. His works include a poem 
on Navigation, various translations and 
commentaries. Lives of Celebrated Mathe¬ 
maticians, &c. He died in 1617. 

Baldness, loss of the hair, complete or 
partial, usually the latter, and due to vari¬ 
ous causes. Most commonly it results as 
one of the changes belonging to old age, due 
to wasting of the skin, hair sacs, &c. It 
may occur as a result of some acute disease, 
or at an unusually early age, without any such 
cause. In both the latter cases it is due to 
defective nourishment of the hair, owing to 
lessened circulation of the blood in the scalp. 
The best treatment for preventing loss of 
hair seems to consist in such measures as 
bathing the head with cold water and dry¬ 
ing it by vigorous rubbing with a rough 
towel and brushing it well with a hard 
brush. Various stimulating lotions are also 
recommended, especially those containing 
cantharides. But probably in most cases 
senile baldness is unpreventible. When 
extreme scurfiness of the scalp accompanies 
loss of the hair an ointment that will clear 
away the scurf will prove beneficial. 

Baldovinet'ti, Alessio, Florentine artist, 
born 1422. Few of his works remain except 
a nativity in the church of the Annunziato, 













































































BALDRIC-BALEARIC ISLANDS. 


and two altar-pieces in the gallery of the 
Uffizi and the Academy of Arts, Florence. 
Died 1499. 

Baldric (bald'rik), a broad belt formerly 
worn over the right or left shoulder dia¬ 
gonally across the body, often highly deco¬ 
rated and enriched with gems, and used not 
only to sustain the sword, dagger, or horn, 
but also for purposes of ornament, and as a 
military or heraldic symbol. The fashion 
appears to have reached its height in the 
fifteenth century. 

Bal'dung, Hans, or Hans Grun (grim), 
German painter and wood engraver, born in 
Swabia 1470, died in Strasburg 1552. His 
work, though inferior to Differs, possessed 
many of the same characteristics, and on this 
account he has been sometimes considered a 
pupil of the Nuremberg master. His prin¬ 
cipal paintings are the series of panels (of 
the date 1516) over the altar in Freiburg 
cathedral; others of his works are to be 
found at Berlin, Colmar, and Basel. His 
numerous and often fantastic engravings 
have the monogram H. and B., with a small 
G in the centre of the H. 

Baldwin I., Emperor of Constantinople, 
founder of the short-lived dynasty of Latin 
sovereigns of the Eastern empire, was born 
in 1172, and was hereditary Count of Flan¬ 
ders and Hainault. His courage and conduct 
in the fourth crusade led to his unanimous 
election as Emperor of the East after the 
capture of Constantinople by the French 
and Venetians in 1204. In the absence of 
Baldwin’s brother with a large part of the 
army, the Greeks rose in revolt under the 
instigation of Joannices, King of Bulgaria. 
Baldwin marched on Adrianople, but was 
taken prisoner and died in captivity, 1206. 
Baldwin was succeeded by his brother Henry. 
—Baldwin II., fifth and last Latin Emperor 
of Constantinople, was born 1217. During his 
minority John de Brienne was regent, but 
on his assuming the power himself the em¬ 
pire fell to pieces. In 1261 Constantinople 
was taken by the forces of Michael Palseolo- 
gus, and Baldwin retired to Italy, dying in 
1270. 

Baldwin I., King of Jerusalem, reigned 
1100-18, having assumed the title which 
his elder brother Godfrey de Bouillon had 
refused. He subdued Caesarea, Ashdod, 
Tripolis, and Acre.— Baldwin II., his cousin 
and successor, reigned from 1118-31. Dur¬ 
ing his reign the reduction of Tyre and 
institution of the order of Templars took 
place.— Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem 


from 1143 to 1162, was son and successor of 
Foulques of Anjou, and the embodiment of 
the best aspects of chivalry. After defeating 
Noureddin in 1152, and again in 1157, he 
was enabled to devote himself to the hope¬ 
less task of improving the kingdom and esta¬ 
blishing the Christian chivalry in the East. 
His death in 1162 was almost immediately 
followed by the total collapse of the kingdom. 

Bale (bal). See Basel. 

Bale, John, an English ecclesiastic, born 
in Suffolk in 1495, died in 1563. Although 
educated a Roman Catholic, he became a 
Protestant, and the intolerance of the Ca¬ 
tholic party drove him to the Netherlands. 
On the accession of Edward VI. he returned 
to England, was presented to the living of 
Bishop’s Stoke, Southampton, and soon after 
nominated Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland. 
Here, on his preaching the reformed reli¬ 
gion, the popular fury against him reached 
such a pitch that in one tumult five of his 
domestics were murdered in his presence. 
On the accession of Mary he lay some time 
concealed in Dublin, and after many hard¬ 
ships found refuge in Switzerland. At her 
death he was appointed by Elizabeth a pre¬ 
bend of Canterbury, where he died. His 
fame as an author rests upon his Scriptorum 
Illustrium Majoris Britannise Catalogus; 
or An Account of the Lives of Eminent 
Writers of Britain, commencing with Ja- 
phet the son of Noah, and ending with the 
year 1557. It is compiled from various 
writers, chiefly from the antiquary Leland. 
He was also the author of nineteen miracle 
plays, printed in 1558. 

Balearic Crane (Balearica pavonina), a 
handsome species of crested crane inhabiting 
North-west Africa. 

Balearic Islands, a group of five islands, 
south-east of Spain, including Majorca, Min¬ 
orca, Iviza, and Formentera. The popular 
derivation of the ancient name Baleares (Gr. 
ballein, to throw) has reference to the re¬ 
pute of the inhabitants for their skill in 
slinging, in which they distinguished them¬ 
selves both in the army of Hannibal and 
under the Romans, by whom the islands were 
annexed in 123 B.c. After being taken by 
the Vandals, under Genseric, and in the 
eighth century by the Moors, they were 
taken by James I., King of Arragon, 1220- 
34, and constituted a kingdom, which in 
1375 was united to Spain. The islands now 
form a Spanish province, with an area of 
1860 square miles, and 300,473 inhabitants. 
See separate articles. 

352 



BALEEN — 

Baleen', whale-bone in the rough or natu¬ 
ral state. 

Bale-fire (A. Saxon bcel, a great fire), in 
its older and strict meaning any great fire 
kindled in the open air, or in a special sense 
the fire of a funeral pile. It has frequently 
been used as synonymous with beacon-fire, 
or a fire kindled as a signal, Sir Walter 
Scott having apparently been the first to 
employ it in this sense; and it has at vari¬ 
ous times, with even less reason, been con¬ 
founded with ‘bale’ in the sense of evilorfatal. 

Balen (balen), Hendrik van, painter,born 
at Antwerp 1560, died 1632. His works, 
chiefly classical, religious, and allegorical— 
some of them executed in partnership with 
Breughel—are to be found in most of the 
European galleries. He was the first mas¬ 
ter of Van Dyck and Snyders. Three of 
his sons also followed the art, but the best 
of them, John van Qalen (1611-54), was 
inferior to his father. 

Bales, Peter, a famous caligrapher, born 
1547, died about 1610. His skill in micro¬ 
graphy is referred to by Holinshed and 
Evelyn. He was one of the early inven¬ 
tors of shorthand, and is said to have been 
employed to imitate signatures by Secretary 
Walsingham. 

Balfe (balf), Michael William, composer, 
was born in Dublin 15th May, 1808. In 
his seventh year he performed in public on 
the violin, and at sixteen took the part of 
the Wicked Huntsman in Der Freischutz 
at Drury Lane. In 1825 he went to Italy, 
wrote the music for a ballet La Peyrouse 
for the Scala at Milan, and in the following 
year sang at the Th6atre-Italien, Paris, with 
moderate success. He returned to Italy, 
and at Palermo was given his first opera, I 
Rivali (1829). For five years he continued 
singing and composing operas for the Italian 
stage. In 1835 he came to England, and 
his Siege of Rochelle, received with favour 
at Drury Lane, was followed by the Maid 
of Artois (1836), Joan of Arc (1837), Fal- 
staff (1838), Keolanthe (1841), Bohemian 
Girl (1843), Quatre Fils d’Aymon (1844), 
Bondman (1846), Maid of Honour (3 847), 
Sicilian Bride (1852), Rose of Castile (1857), 
Satanella (1858), Blanche de Nevers (1860), 
&c. The composer died 20th October, 1870. 
His posthumous opera, The Talisman, was 
first performed in London in June, 1874. 
His operas are melodious and many of the 
airs are excellent. 

Balfour (bal'fur), Sir Andrew, Bart., 
a Scottish botanist and physician, born in 
vol. L 353 


-BALFOUR, 

Fifeshire in 1630. After completing his 
studies at St. Andrews and London, and 
travelling on the Continent, he settled at 
Edinburgh, where he planned, with Sir 
Robert Sibbald, the Royal College of Phy¬ 
sicians, and was elected its first president. 
Shortly before his death he laid the founda¬ 
tion of a hospital in Edinburgh, which though 
at first narrow and confined, expanded into 
the Royal Infirmary. Sir Andrew died in 
1694. His familiar letters were published 
in 1700. 

Balfour, Francis Maitland, an embryo¬ 
logist, born in 1851, studied at Harrow and 
Trinity College, Cambridge. Articles on 
his special study gained him a high reputa¬ 
tion while still an undergraduate, and after 
further work at Naples he published in 
1874, in conjunction with Dr. M. Foster, 
the Elements of Embryology, a valuable 
contribution to the literature of biology. 
He was elected a fellow of his college, fel¬ 
low and member of council of the Royal 
Society, and in 1881 professor of animal 
morphology at Cambridge. The promise 
of his chief work Comparative Embryology 
(1880-81) was unfulfilled, as in the latter 
year he was killed by a fall on Mont Blanc. 

Balfour, Sir James, a Scottish lawyer 
and public character of the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, was a native of Fifeshire. In youth, 
for his share in the conspiracy against Car¬ 
dinal Beaton, he was condemned with Knox 
to the galleys; but after his escape with the 
rest in 1550 he found it to his interest to 
change his opinions, and latterly he was ap¬ 
pointed, through the favour of Queen Mary, 
Lord of Session, and member of the privy- 
council. In 1567 he was appointed governor 
of Edinburgh Castle, but had no scruple in 
surrendering it to Murray, who made him 
president of the Court of Session. In 1570 
he was charged with a share in the murder 
of Darnley, but got off by bribery. He was 
latterly instrumental in compassing the 
death of Regent Morton by the production 
of a deed signed by him and bearing on 
the Darnley murder. His own death took 
place shortly after in 1583. The Practicks 
of Scots Law, attributed to him, continued 
to be used and consulted in manuscript for 
nearly a century until it was supplanted by 
the Institutes of Lord Stair. 

Balfour, John Hutton, a distinguished 
botanist, born 1808, died 1884. He gradu¬ 
ated at Edinburgh University in arts and 
in medicine; in 1841-45 was professor of 
botany in Glasgow University; and in the 



BALFROOSH 


BALKH. 


latter year removed to Edinburgh to occupy 
a similar post, resigning his chair in 1879. 
He wrote valuable botanical text-books, in¬ 
cluding Elements, Outlines, Manual, and 
Class-book, besides various other works. 

Balfroosh', or Barfurush', a town, Per¬ 
sia, province of Mazanderan, about twelve 
miles from the Caspian, a great emporium 
of the trade between Persia and Russia. 
Pop. estimated 50,000. 

Ba'li, an island of the Indian Archipe¬ 
lago east of Java, belonging to Holland; 
greatest length, 85, greatest breadth, 55 
miles; area, about 2260 square miles. It 
consists chiefly of a series of volcanic moun¬ 
tains, of which the loftiest, Agoong (11,326 
feet), became active in 1843 after a long 
period of quiescence. Principal products, 
rice, cocoa, coffee, indigo, cotton, &c. The 
people are akin to those of Java and are 
mostly Brahmans in religion. It is divided 
into eight provinces under native rajahs, 
and forms one colony with Lombok, the 
united pop. being 863,725, of whom 300,000 
may belong to Bali. 

Bal'iol, or Balliol, John de, of Barnard 
Castle, Northumberland, fatherof king John 
Baliol, a great English (or Norman) baron 
in the reign of Henry III., to whose cause 
he strongly attached himself in his struggles 
with the barons. In 1263 he laid the foun¬ 
dation of Balliol College, Oxford, which was 
completed by his widow Devorguila or Dev- 
orgilla. She was daughter and co-heiress 
of Allan of Galloway, a great baron of Scot¬ 
land, by Margaret, eldest daughter of David, 
Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the 
Lion. It was on the strength of this gene¬ 
alogy that his son John Baliol became tem¬ 
porary King of Scotland. He died 1269. 

Bal'iol, or Balliol, John, King of Scot¬ 
land; born about 1249, died 1315. On the 
death of Margaret, the Maiden of Norway 
and grandchild of Alexander III., Baliol 
claimed the vacant throne by virtue of his 
descent from David, Earl of Huntingdon, 
brother to William the lion, King of Scot¬ 
land (see above art.). Robert Bruce (grand¬ 
father of the king) opposed Baliol; but 
Edward I.’s decision was in favour of Bal¬ 
iol, who did homage to him for the kingdom, 
Nov. 20,1292. Irritated by Edward’s harsh 
exercise of authority, Baliol concluded a 
treaty with France, then at war with Eng¬ 
land; but after the defeat at Dunbar he 
surrendered his crown into the hands of the 
English monarch. He was sent with his 
son to the Tower, but, by the intercession of 


the pope in 1297, obtained liberty to retire 
to his Norman estates, where he died.—His 
son, Edward, in 1332 landed in Fife with 
an armed force, and having defeated a large 
army under the regent Mar (who was killed), 
got himself crowned king, but was driven 
out in three months. 

Balis'ta, or Ballis'ta, a machine used in 
military operations by the ancients for hurl¬ 
ing heavy missiles, thus serving in some 
degree the purpose of the modern cannon. 
The motive power appears to have been 
obtained by the torsion of ropes, fibres, cat¬ 
gut, or hair. They are said to have some¬ 
times had an effective range of a quarter of 
a mile, and to have thrown stones weighing 
as much as 300 lbs. The balistse differed 
from the ccitapultce , in that the latter were 
used for throwing darts. 

Balis'tidae. See Trigger-fishes. 

Balize (ba-lez'). See Belize. 

Bal'kan (anc. Hcemus), a rugged chain of 
mountains extending from Cape Emineb, 
on the Black Sea, in Eastern Roumelia, 
westwards to the borders of Servia, though 
the name is sometimes used to include the 
whole mountain system from the Black Sea 
to the Adriatic, the region south of Austria 
and Russia, or south of the Danube and 
Save, forming the Balkan Peninsula. The 
range, which is over 200 miles in length, 
forms the water-shed between the streams 
flowing northward into the Danube and 
those flowing southward to the HCgean, the 
chief of the latter being the Maritza. The 
average height is not more than 5000 ft., 
but the highest point, Tchat-al-dagh, is 
8340 ft. As a political boundary it divides 
Bulgaria from Eastern Roumelia. It is 
considered the natural bulwark of Turkey 
against enemies on its European frontiers. 
Yet in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 
the Russian troops managed to cross it with¬ 
out great difficulty, though they had to en¬ 
counter a stubborn resistance at the Shipka 
Pass, wdiere a Turkish army of 32,000 men 
ultimately surrendered to them. 

Balkan Free States, Bulgaria, Eastern 
Roumelia, Roumania, and Servia. 

Balkash', or Balkhash (bal-Aash'), a salt 
lake in Russian Central Asia, surrounded 
by steppes and plains; length about 330 
miles, area 8500 sq. miles, depth nowhere 
more than 80 feet; formerly of much greater 
area and gradually growing smaller; receives 
the Ili and other smaller streams. 

Balkh (balk or balA), a city in the 
north of Afghanistan, in Afghan Turkestan, 

354 



BALKIS- -BALLAD, 


at one time the emporium of the trade 
between India, China, and Western Asia. 
It was long the centre of Zoroastrianism 
and was also an important Buddhist centre. 
In 1220 it was sacked by Genghis Khan, 
and again by Timur in the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury. The remains of the ancient city ex¬ 
tend for miles. The town is now merely 
a village, but a new town has risen up an 
hour’s journey north of the old, the resi¬ 
dence of the Afghan governor, with a pop. 
of about 20,000. The district, which formed 
a portion of ancient Bactria, lies between 
the Oxus and the Hindu-Kush, with Ba- 
dakshan to the east and the desert to the 
west. In the vicinity of the Oxus, where 
there are facilities for irrigation, the soil is 
rich and productive, and there are many 
populous villages. 

Bal'kis, the Arabian name of the Queen 
of Sheba who visited Solomon. She is the 
central figure of innumerable Eastern le¬ 
gends and tales. 

Ball, Game of. Ball-playing was prac¬ 
tised by the ancients, and old and young 
amused themselves with it. The Phaeacian 
damsels are represented in the Odyssey as 
playing it to the sound of music; and Horace 
represents Maecenas as amusing himself thus 
in a journey. In the Greek gymnasia, the 
Roman baths, and in many Roman villas, a 
sphceristerium (a place appropriated for 
playing ball) was to be found; the games 
played being similar to those indulged at 
the present day. In the middle ages the 
sport continued very popular both as an 
indoor and outdoor exercise, and was a fa¬ 
vourite court pastime until about tbe end of 
the eighteenth century. In England foot¬ 
ball and tennis are mentioned at an early 
date, and a favourite game prior to the Eng¬ 
lish revolution was one in which a mall or 
mallet was used, hence the name pall-mall 
(It. palla, L. pila, a ball) for the game and 
the place where it was played. The most 
popular modern forms are cricket, base-ball, 
foot-ball, golf, lawn-tennis, fives, and polo. 

Ball, John, an itinerant preacher of the 
fourteenth century, excommunicated about 
1367 for promulgating ‘errors, schisms, and 
scandals against the Pope, archbishops, bi¬ 
shops, and clergy.’ He was one of the 
most active promoters of the popular insur¬ 
gent spirit which found vent under Wat 
Tyler in 1381, and the couplet 

‘ When Adam delved and Eve span 
Who was then the gentleman?’ 

is attributed to him. 

355 


Ballad, a term loosely applied to various 
poetic forms of the song type, but in its 
most definite sense a poem in which a short 
narrative is subjected to simple lyrical treat¬ 
ment. It was, as indicated by its name, 
which is related to the Italian ballare and 
O. French bailer , to dance, originally a song 
accompanied by a dance. The ballad is pro¬ 
bably one of the earliest forms of rhythmic 
poetic expression, constituting a species of 
epic in miniature, out of which by fusion and 
remoulding larger epics were sometimes 
shaped. As in the folk-tales, so in the 
ballads of different nations, the resemblan¬ 
ces are sufficiently numerous and close to 
point to the conclusion that they have often 
had their first origin in the same primitive 
folk-lore or popular tales. But in any case, 
excepting a few modern literary ballads of 
a subtler kind, they have been the popular 
expression of the broad human emotions 
clustering about some strongly outlined in¬ 
cidents of war, love, crime, superstition, or 
death. It is probable that in the Homeric 
poems fragments of older ballads are em¬ 
bedded; but the earliest ballads, properly 
so called, of which we have record were 
the ballistea or dancing-songs of the Ro¬ 
mans, of the kind sung in honour of the 
deeds of Aurelian in the Sarmatic war by a 
chorus of dancing boys. In their less spe¬ 
cialized sense of lyric narratives, their early 
popularity among the Teutonic race is evi¬ 
denced by the testimony of Tacitus, of the 
Gothic historian Jornandes, and the Lom¬ 
bard historian Paulus Hiaconus; and many 
appear to have been written down by order 
of Charlemagne and used as a means of 
education. Of the ballads of this period, 
however, only a general conception can be 
formed from their traces in conglomerates 
like the Niebelungenlied; the more artifi¬ 
cial productions of the Minnesanger and 
Meistersanger overlying the more popular 
ballad until the fifteenth century, when it 
sprang once more into vigorous life. A 
third German ballad period was initiated 
by Burger under the inspiration of the 
revived interest in the subject shown in 
Great Britain and the publication of the 
Percy Reliques; and the movement was 
sustained by Herder, Schiller, Goethe, 
Heine, Uhland, and others. The earlier 
German work is, however, of inferior value 
to that of Scandinavia, where, though com¬ 
paratively few manuscripts have survived, 
and those not more than three or four cen¬ 
turies old, a more perfect oral tradition has 



BALLAD — 

rendered it possible to trace the original 
stock of the twelfth century. 

Of the English and Scottish ballads an¬ 
terior to the thirteenth century there are 
few traces beyond the indication that they 
were abundant, if indeed anything can be 
definitely asserted of them earlier than 
the fourteenth century. Among the oldest 
may be placed The Little Gest of Robin 
Hood, Hugh of Lincoln, Sir Patrick Spens, 
and the Battle of Otterbourn. In the 
fifteenth century specimens multiply ra¬ 
pidly: ballad making became in the reign of 
Henry VIII. a fashionable amusement, the 
king himself setting the example; and though 
in the reign of Elizabeth ballads came into 
literary disrepute and ballad singers were 
brought under the law, yet there was no 
apparent check upon the rate of their pro¬ 
duction. Except perhaps in the north of 
England and south of Scotland, there was, 
however, a marked and increasing tendency 
to vulgarization as distinct from the preser¬ 
vation of popular qualities. The value of 
the better ballads was lost sight of in the 
flood of dull, rhythmless, and frequently 
scurrilous verse. The modern revival in 
Britain dates from the publication of Ram¬ 
say’s Evergreen and Tea-table Miscellany 
(1724-27) and of the selection made by 
Bishop Percy from his seventeenth-century 
MSS. (1765), a revival not more important 
for its historic interest, than for the influence 
which it has exercised upon all subsequent 
poetry. 

The threefold wave discernible in German, 
if not in British, ballad history, is equally to 
be traced in Spain, which alone among the 
Latinized countries of Europe has songs of 
equal age and merit with the British histo¬ 
ric ballads. The principal difference be¬ 
tween them is, that for the most part the 
Spanish romance is in trochaic, the British 
ballad in iambic metre. The ballads of the 
Cid date from about the end of the twelfth 
and beginning of the thirteenth century; 
and then followed an interval of more ela¬ 
borate production, a revival of ballad inter¬ 
est in the sixteenth century, a new declen¬ 
sion, and finally a modern and still persist¬ 
ing enthusiasm. 

The French poetry of this kind never 
reached any high degree of perfection, the 
romance, farce, and lyric flourishing at the 
expense of the ballad proper. Of Italy 
much the same may be said, though Sicily 
has supplied a great store of ballads; and 
nearly all the Portuguese poetry of this kind 


■ BALLARAT. 

is to be traced to a Spanish origin. The Rus¬ 
sians have lyrico-epic poems, of which some, 
in old Russian, are excellent, and the Ser¬ 
vians are still in the ballad-producing stage 
of civilization. Modern Greece has also its 
store of ballads, to which Madame Chenier 
called attention in the middle of last cen¬ 
tury. Both in Greece and Russia and in 
the Pyrenees the old habit of improvising 
song as an accompaniment to dance still 
exists. 

Ballade (bal-ad'), the earlier and modern 
French spelling of ballad, but now limited in 
its use to a distinct verse-form introduced 
into English literature of late years from 
the French and chiefly used by writers of 
rers-de-societe. It consists of three stanzas 
of eight lines each, with an envoy or closing 
stanza of four lines. The rhymes, which 
are not more than three, follow each other 
in the stanzas thus: a, b, a, b; b, c, b, c, and 
in the envoy, b, c, b, c; and the same line 
serves as a refrain to each of the stanzas 
and to the envoy. There are other varieties, 
but this may be regarded as the strictest, 
according to the precedent of Villon and 
Marot. 

Ballantyne, James, the printer of Sir 
W. Scott’s works, born at Kelso 1772, died 
at Edinburgh 1833. Successively a solici¬ 
tor and a printer in his native town, at 
Scott’s suggestion he removed to Edinburgh, 
where the high, perfection to which he had 
brought the art of printing, and his connec¬ 
tion with Scott, secured him a large trade. 
The printing firm of James Ballantyne & 
Co. included Scott, James Ballantyne and 
his brother John (who died in 1821). For 
many years he conducted the Edinburgh 
Weekly Journal. His firm was involved in 
the bankruptcy of Constable & Co., by which 
Scott’s fortunes were wrecked, but Ballan¬ 
tyne was continued by the creditors’ trustee 
in the literary management of the printing- 
house. He survived Scott only about four 
months. 

Ballarat', or Ballaarat, an Australian 
town in Victoria, chief centre of the gold¬ 
mining industry of the colony, and next in 
importance to Melbourne, from which it is 
distant w.n.w. about sixty miles direct. It 
consists of two distinct municipalities, Bal¬ 
larat West and Ballarat East, separated by 
the Yarrowee Creek, and has many hand¬ 
some buildings, and all the institutions of a 
progressive and flourishing city, including 
hospital, mechanics’ institute and library, 
free public library, Anglican and R. C. ca- 

356 



BALLAST-BALLIOL COLLEGE. 


thedrals, &c. Gold was first discovered in 
1851, and the extraordinary richness of the 
field soon attracted hosts of miners. The 
surface diggings having been exhausted the 
precious metal is now got from greater 
depths, and there are mines as deep as some 
coal-pits, the gold being obtained by crush¬ 
ing the auriferous quartz. The mines give 
employment to over 6000 men. There are 
also foundries, woollen mills, flour-mills, 
breweries and distilleries, &c. Population 
about 37,000. 

Ballast, a term applied (1) to heavy 
matter, as stone, sand, iron, or water placed 
in the bottom of a ship or other vessel to 
sink it in the water to such a depth as to 
enable it to carry sufficient sail without 
oversetting. (2) The sand placed in bags 
in the car of a balloon to steady it and to 
enable the aeronaut to lighten the balloon 
by throwing part of it out. (3) The material 
used to fill up the space between the rails on 
a railway in order to make it firm and solid. 

Ball-cock, a kind of self-acting stop¬ 
cock opened and shut by means of a hollow 



Fig. 1, Cistern with Ball-cock attached. 

Fig. 2, Internal structure of Cock. 

a, Valve shown open so as to admit water, b, Arm 
of the lever, which being raised shuts the valve. 

sphere or ball of metal attached to the end 
of a lever connected with the cock. Such 
cocks are often employed to regulate the 
supply of water to cisterns. The ball floats 
on the water in the cistern by its buoyancy, 
and rises and sinks as the water rises and 
sinks, shutting off the water in the one case 
and letting it on in the other. 

Bal'lentyne, or Bellenden, John, a 
Scottish poet, and the translator of Boece’s 
Latin History, and of the first five books of 
Livy into the vernacular language of his 

357 


time, was a native of Lothian, and appears 
to have been born towards the close of the 
fifteenth century. He was in the service of 
James V. from the king’s earliest years, at 
whose request he translated Boece’s His¬ 
tory, which had been published at Paris in 
1526, the translation being printed in 1536. 
As a reward he was made archdeacon of 
Moray and a canon of Boss. He was a 
bitter opponent of the Reformation, and is 
said to have died at Rome in 1550. 

Ballet (bal'a), a species of dance, usually 
forming an interlude in theatrical perfor¬ 
mances, but principally confined to opera. 
Its object is to represent, by mimic move¬ 
ments and dances, actions, characters, sen¬ 
timents, passions, and feelings, in which 
several dancers perform together. The 
ballet is an invention of modern times, 
though pantomimic dances were not un¬ 
known to the ancients. The dances fre¬ 
quently introduced into operas seldom de¬ 
serve the name ballet, as they usually do 
not represent any action, but are destined 
only to give the dancers an opportunity of 
showing their skill, and the modern ballet 
in general, from an artistic point of view, is 
a very low-class entertainment. 

Ball-flower, an architectural ornament 
resembling a ball placed 
in a circular flower, the 
three petals of which 
form a cup round it; 
usually inserted in a hol¬ 
low moulding, and gener¬ 
ally characteristic of the 
Decorated Gothic style 
of the fourteenth century. 

Ballia, a town of India, in the North¬ 
western Provinces, on the Ganges, the 
administrative head-quarters of a district of 
same name. Pop. 15,320. 

Ballina', a town and river-port, Ireland, 
county Mayo, on both banks of the Moy, 
about 5 miles above its mouth in Killala 
Bay, with a considerable local and also a 
little coasting and foreign trade. Pop. 
5760. 

Ballinasloe' (-slo), a town, Ireland, in 
Galway and Roscommon counties, 15 miles 
south-west of Athlone, on both sides of the 
Suck, noted for its cattle fair, from 5th till 
9th October, the most important in Ireland. 
Pop. 5052. 

Bal'liol College, Oxford, was founded 
about 1263 by John Balliol (or Baliol) of 
Barnard Castle, Durham, and Devorgilla, 
his wife (parents of John Balliol, king of 



Ball-flower. 
































BALLISTA-BALMERINO. 


Scotland). There are a large number of 
valuable scholarships and exhibitions, in¬ 
cluding the Snell exhibitions, fourteen in 
number, held by students from Glasgow 
University. 

Ballista. See Balista. 

Ballistic Pendulum, an apparatus for 
ascertaining the velocity of military projec¬ 
tiles, and consequently the force of fired 
gunpowder. A piece of ordnance is fired 
against bags of sand supported in a strong 
case or frame suspended so as to swing like 
a pendulum. The arc through which it 
vibrates is shown by an index, and the 
amount of vibration forms a measure of the 
force or velocity of the ball. 

Balloon'. See Aeronautics. 

Balloon-fish ( TetraCdon linedtus), order 
Plectognathi, a curious tropical fish that can 
inflate itself so as to resemble a ball. 

Bal lot, Voting by, signifies literally 
voting by means of little balls (called by 
the French ballottes), usually of different 
colours, which are put into a box in such 
a manner as to enable the voter, if he 
chooses, to conceal for whom or for what he 
gives his suffrage. The method is adopted 
by most clubs in the election of their mem¬ 
bers—a white ball indicating assent, a black 
ball dissent. Hence, when an applicant is 
rejected, he is said to be blackballed. The 
term voting by ballot is also applied in a 
general way to any method of secret voting, 
as, for instance, when a person gives his 
vote by means of a ticket bearing the name 
of the candidate whom he wishes-to sup¬ 
port. In this sense vote by ballot is the 
mode adopted in electing the members of 
legislative assemblies in most countries, as 
well as the members of various other bodies. 
In ancient Greece and Rome the ballot 
was in common use. In Britain it had long 
been advocated in the election of members 
of Parliament and of municipal corpora¬ 
tions, but it was only introduced by an act 
passed in 1872. 

In the United States the ballot was in 
use in early colonial times, and was made 
compulsory in the constitutions of New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and all other States. 

The Australian ballot system, originated 
within ten years in the British colonies, 
has recently been adopted by law in three- 
fourths of the United States. By a carefully 
contrived system of secluding each voter at 
the polls, and marking and folding the bal¬ 
lots, it claims to secure greater secrecy and 
honesty than any other method of voting. 


Ballyme'na, a town, Ireland, county 
Antrim, 22 miles from Belfast, with a con¬ 
siderable trade in linens and linen yarns, 
the manufacture of which is carried on to a 
great extent. Pop. 8883. 

Ballymoney, a town of Ireland, county 
Antrim, 38 miles N.w. of Belfast; linen, 
chemicals, tanning, and brewing. Pop. 3049. 

Ballyshan'non, a small seaport of Ire¬ 
land, county Donegal. Pop. 2840. 

Balmaceda, Jose Manuel, Chilian 
statesman, born 1840; early distinguished 
as a political orator; advocated in Con¬ 
gress separation of church and state; as 
premier, in 1884, introduced civil marriage; 
elected President in 1886. A conflict with 
the Congressional party, provoked by his 
alleged cruelties and official dishonesty, 
and advocacy of the claim of Signor Vicuna 
as his legally elected successor, resulted in 
Balmaceda’s overthrow and suicide, 1891. 

Balm of Gilead, the exudation ot a tree, 
Balsamodendron gileadense, nat. order Amy- 
ridacese, a native of Arabia Felix, and also 
obtained from the closely allied species Bal- 




Balm of Gilead —Balsamodendron gileadense. 


samodendron 0}wbalsamum. The leaves of 
the former tree yield when bruised a strong 
aromatic scent; and the balm of Gilead of 
the shops, or balsam of Mecca or of Syria, 
is obtained from it by making an incision in 
its trunk. It has a yellowish or greenish 
colour, a warm, bitterish, aromatic taste, 
and an acidulous fragrant smell. It is valued 
as an odoriferous unguent and cosmetic. 

Balmer'ino, Arthur Elphinstone, 
Lord, a Scottish Jacobite, born 1688, exe¬ 
cuted 1746. He took part in the Jacobite 
rebellion of 1715, and fought at Sheriffmuir. 

358 



BALMORAL CASTLE-BALTIC SEA. 


Having joined the young Pretender in 1745, 
he was taken prisoner at Culloden, tried at 
Westminster, found guilty, and beheaded. 
His title was from Balmerino in Fife. 

Balmor'al Castle, the Highland residence 
of Queen Victoria, beautifully situated on 
the s. bank of the Dee, in the county of, 
and 45 miles w. of Aberdeen. It stands in 
the midst of fine and varied mountain sce¬ 
nery, is built of granite in the Scottish ba¬ 
ronial style, has been recently (1888) en¬ 
larged, and has a massive and imposing 
appearance. The estate, which is the queen's 
private property, extends to 25,000 acres, 
mostly deer forest. 

Balnaves', Henry, of Halhill, a Scottish 
reformer, was born at Kirkcaldy, educated 
at St. Andrews, and became a lord of ses¬ 
sion and a member of the Scottish parlia¬ 
ment in 1538. He was one of the commis¬ 
sioners appointed in 1543 to treat of the 
proposed marriage between Edward VI. and 
Mary. In 1547 he was one of the prisoners 
taken in the castle of St. Andrews and exiled 
to France. Recalled in 1554, he busily en¬ 
gaged in the establishment of the reformed 
faith; assisted in revising the Book of Dis¬ 
cipline, and accompanied Murray to Eng¬ 
land in connection with Darnley’s murder. 
He died in 1579. 

Balrampur. See Bulrampur. 

Balsa, a kind of raft or float used on the 
coasts and rivers of Peru and other parts of 



Balsa of Inflated Skins. 


South America for fishing, for landing goods 
and passengers through a heavy surf, and 
for other purposes where buoyancy is chiefly 
wanted. It is formed generally of two 
inflated seal-skins, connected by a sort of 
platform on which the fisherman, passengers, 
or goods are placed. 

Bal'sam, the common name of succulent 
plants of the genus Impatiens, family Balsa- 
minacese, having beautiful irregular flowers, 
cultivated in gardens and green - houses. 
Impatiens balsamina, a native of the East 

359 


Indies, is a common cultivated species. The 
Balsaminacete are distinguished by their 
manv-seeded fruit. See Impatiens. 

Balsam, an aromatic, resinous substance, 
flowing spontaneously or by incision from 
certain plants. A great variety of sub¬ 
stances pass under this name. But in che¬ 
mistry the term is confined to such vegetable 
juices as consist of resins mixed with vola¬ 
tile oils, and yield the volatile oil on dis¬ 
tillation. The resins are produced from the 
oils by oxidation. A balsam is thus in¬ 
termediate between a volatile oil and a 
resin. It is soluble in alcohol and ether, 
and capable of yielding benzoic acid. The 
balsams are either liquid or more or less 
solid; as, for example, the balm of Gilead, 
and the balsams of copaiba, Peru, and Tolu. 
Benzoin, dragon’s-blood, and storax are not 
true balsams, though sometimes called so. 
The balsams are used in perfumery, medi¬ 
cine, and the arts. See Copaiba , &c.— Bal¬ 
sam of Gilead or of Mecca , balm of Gilead 
(which see).— Canada balsam. See the art. 
Canada Balsam. 

Balsam Fir, the balm of Gilead fir. See 

Balm of Gilead. 

Balsa'mo, Joseph. See Cagliostro, Count. 

Balsamoden'dron, a genus of trees or 
bushes, order Amyridacese, species of which 
yield such balsamic or resinous substances as 
balm of Gilead, bdellium, myrrh, &c. 

Balta, a Russian town, gov. of Podolia, 
on the Kodema, an affluent of the Bug, 115 
miles N.N.w. of Odessa. Pop. 18,450. 

Baltic, Battle of the, the defeat of the 
Danish fleet at Copenhagen by Sir Hyde 
Parker and Nelson in 1801. 

Baltic Provinces, a term commonly given 
to the Russian governments of Courland, 
Livonia, and Esthonia. 

Baltic Sea, an inland sea or large gulf 
connected with the North Sea, washing the 
coasts of Denmark, Germany, Russia, and 
Sweden; nearly 900 miles long, extending to 
200 broad; superficial extent, together with 
the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, 171,743 
sq. miles. Its greatest depth is 126 fathoms; 
mean, 44 fathoms. A chain of islands sep¬ 
arates the southern part from the northern, 
or Gulf of Bothnia. In the north-east the 
Gulf of Finland stretches far into Russia, 
and separates Finland from Esthonia; the 
Gulf of Riga washes the shores of the three 
Russian governments of Courland, Livonia, 
and Esthonia; while the Gulf of Danzig is 
an inlet on the Prussian coast. The water 
of the Baltic is colder and clearer than that 









BALTTC SEA-BALTIMORE BIRD. 


of the ocean: it contains a smaller propor¬ 
tion of salt, and the ice obstructs the navi¬ 
gation three or four months in the year. 
Among the rivers that enter it are the Neva, 
Dwina, Oder, Vistula and Niemen. Islands: 
Samsoe, Moen, Bornholm, Langeland, Laa- 



land, which belong to Denmark (besides 
Zealand and Funen); Gottland and Oeland, 
belonging to Sweden; Rtigen, belonging to 
Prussia; the Aland Islands, Dagoe, and 
Oesel, belonging to Russia. The Sound, 
the Great and the Little Belt lead from the 
Kattegat into the Baltic. The Baltic and 
North Sea are connected by means of the 
Eider and a canal from it to the neighbour¬ 
hood of Kiel, and the construction of a 


canal large enough for men-of-war has been 
begun, to start from the Elbe near its mouth 
and end in Kiel Bay. 

Baltimore, a city and port in Maryland, 
U. States, finely situated on the n. side of 
the Patapsco, 14 miles above Chesapeake 
Bay. Baltimore takes its name from Lord 
Baltimore, the founder of Maryland; it was 
first laid out as a town in 1729; and was 
erected into a city in 1797. It is well built, 
chiefly of brick, and is known as the * monu¬ 
mental city,’ from the public monuments 
which adorn it, the principal being the 
Washington monument. Among its build¬ 
ings are the city-hall, built in Renaissance 
style, of white marble, with a tower and 
dome rising 240 feet; the Peabody Insti¬ 
tute, containing a library, art gallery, &c.; 
the Maryland Institute; the custom-house; 
the post-office; the United States court¬ 
house and jail, the Johns Hopkins hospital, 
the Roman Catholic cathedral, &c. The 
chief educational institution, now one of the 
most important in the States, is the Johns 
Hopkins University, endowed with 3,500,000 
dols. by its founder (whose name it bears). 
The University of Maryland is one of the 
oldest medical schools in the U. S., estab¬ 
lished in 1812. Industries; ship-building; 
manufactures of iron, wool, cotton, pottery, 
&c.; sugar-refining, distilling, tanning, the 
making of agricultural implements, canning 
oysters and fruits, &c. As a flour market 
Baltimore is an important centre; and it 
does an immense trade in exporting tobacco 
and other products. The harbour is very 
extensive, and has lately been much im¬ 
proved. Pop. 1890,434,439. 

Baltimore, George Calvert, Lord, born 
in Yorkshire about 1580; died in London, 
1632. He was for some time secretary of 
state to James I., but this post he resigned 
in 1624 in consequence of having become a 
Roman Catholic. Notwithstanding this he 
retained the confidence of the king, who in 
1625 raised him to the Irish peerage, his 
title being from Baltimore, a fishing village 
of Cork. He had previously obtained a grant 
of land in Newfoundland, but as this colony 
was much exposed to the attacks of the 
French he left it, and obtained another 
patent for Maryland. He died before the 
charter was completed, and it was granted 
to his son Cecil, who deputed the governor¬ 
ship to his brother Leonard (1606-47). 

Baltimore Bird, an American bird, the 
Icterus Baltimorii , family Icteridse, nearly 
allied to the Sturnidae, or starlings. It is a 

3f)Q 











BALZAC. 


BALUCHISTAN 


migratory bird, and is known also by the 
names of ‘golden robin,’ ‘ hang-bird, ’ and ‘ fire¬ 
bird.’ It is about 7 inches long; the head and 
upper parts are black; the under parts of a 
brilliant orange hue. It builds a pouch-like 
nest, very skilfully constructed of threads 
deftly interwoven, suspended from a forked 
branch and shaded by overhanging leaves. 
It feeds on insects, caterpillars, beetles, &c. 
Its song is a clear, mellow whistle. 

Baluchistan (ba-lo'chi-stiin), a country 
in Asia, the coast of which is continuous 



Baluchis on the Look-out. 


with the north-western seaboard of India, 
bounded on the north by Afghanistan, on 
the west by Persia, on the south by the 
Arabian Sea, and on the east by Sind. It 
has an area of about 160,000 sq. miles, and 
a population estimated at 400,000. The 
general surface of the country is rugged 
and mountainous, with some extensive in¬ 
tervals of barren sandy deserts, and there 
is a general deficiency of water. The coun¬ 
try is almost entirely occupied by pastoral 
tribes under semi-independent sirdars or 
chiefs. The inhabitants are divided into 
two great branches, the Baluchis and Bra- 

361 


huis, differing in their language, figure, and 
manners. The Baluchi language resembles 
the modern Persian, the Brahui presents 
many points of agreement with the Dra- 
vidian languages of India. The Baluchis 
in general have tall figures, long visages, 
and prominent features; the Brahuis, on the 
contrary, have short, thick bones, with 
round faces and flat lineaments, with hair 
and beards frequently brown. Both races 
are zealous Mohammedans, hospitable, brave, 
and capable of enduring much fatigue. The 
Khan of Khelat is nominal ruler of the 
whole land, and in 1877 concluded a treaty 
with Britain, in virtue of which he has be¬ 
come a feudatory of the Empress of India. 
The right had already been secured of occu¬ 
pying at pleasure the mountain passes be¬ 
tween Khelat and Afghanistan; but the 
new treaty places the whole country at the 
disposal of the British government for all 
military and strategical purposes. Quetta, 
a town in the north-east, occupying an im¬ 
portant position, lias been absolutely an¬ 
nexed. 

Bal'uster, a small column or pilaster, of 
various forms and dimensions, often adorned 
with mouldings, used for balustrades. 

Balustrade', a range of balusters, together 
with the cornice or coping which they sup¬ 
port, used as a parapet for bridges or the 
roofs of buildings, or as a mere termination 
to a structure; also serving as a fence or 
inclosure for altars, balconies, terraces, 
staircases, &c. 

Baluze (ba-liiz), Etienne, French his¬ 
torian and miscellaneous writer, born 1630, 
died 1718. For more than thirty years he 
was librarian to M. de Colbert, and was 
appointed professor of canon law in the 
royal college, but displeasing Louis XIV. 
with his Histoire generale de la maison 
d’Auvergne, he was thrown into prison and 
his property confiscated. He recovered his 
liberty in 1713, but did not regain his posi¬ 
tion. He left some 1500 MSS. in the 
national library of Paris, besides forty-five 
printed works, including Regum Francorum 
Capitularia, 2 vols., and Miscellanea, 
7 vols. 

Balzac (bal-zak), Honore de, a celebrated 
French novelist, w r as born at Tours in 1799, 
died 1850. Before completing his twenty- 
fourth year he had published a number of 
novels under various noms de plume , but 
the success attending all was very indiffer¬ 
ent; and it was not till 1829, by the publi¬ 
cation of Le Dernier Cbouan, a tale of La 






BALZAC - 

Vendee, and the first novel to which Balzac 
appended his name, that the attention of 
the public was diverted to the extraordinary- 
genius of the author. A still greater popu¬ 
larity attended his Physiologie de Manage, 
a work full of piquant and caustic observa¬ 
tions on human nature. He wrote a large 
number of novels, all marked by a singular 
knowledge of human nature and distinct 
delineation of character, but apt to be 
marred by exaggeration. Ainong his best- 
known works are: Scenes de la Vie de Pro¬ 
vince ; Scbnes de la Vie Parisienne; Le 
Pbre Goriot; Eugenie Grandet; and Le 
Mddecin de Campagne. The publication 
of this last, in 1835, led to a correspondence 
between Balzac and the Countess Eveline 
de Hanska, a Polish lady whom, after about 
fifteen years, he visited and married. A 
collected edition of his works under the title 
La Comedie Humaine was published in 45 
vols., Paris, 1856-59. 

Balzac (bal-zak), Jean Louis Guez de, 
French writer, born 1594, died 1654. His 
writings, which had a great reputation in 
their day owing to the elegance of his style, 
are now neglected. The most esteemed are 
his Familiar Letters, Le Prince, Le Socrate 
Chretien, and Aristippe. 

Bamba, a district of the Congo, w. coast 
of Africa, lying to the south of the river 
Ambriz. It is thickly populated, and is 
rich in gold, silver, copper, salt, &c. 

Bambar'ra, a negro kingdom of Central 
Africa, on the Joliba or Upper Niger, first 
visited by Mungo Park. The country is 
generally very fertile, producing wheat, rice, 
maize, yams, &c. The inhabitants belong 
to the Mandingo race, and are partly Mo¬ 
hammedans. Excellent cotton cloth is 
made. The capital is Sego. Pop. esti¬ 
mated at 2,000,000. 

Bam'berg, a town of Germany, Bavaria, 
charmingly situated on several hills, on the 
navigable rirer Regnitz, some 3 miles from 
its mouth in the Main. It is the seat of a 
Catholic archbishop; the cathedral, founded 
in 1004, is one of the finest churches in 
Germany. The royal library contains 
100,000 volumes and valuable MSS. Bam¬ 
berg carries on a large trade; its indus¬ 
tries are cotton-spinning, tobacco-manu¬ 
facture, brewing, &c. Pop. 29,587. 

Bambino (bam-be'no; Italian infant),the 
figure of our Saviour represented as an in¬ 
fant in swaddling-clothes. The Santissimo 
Bambino in the church of Ara Caeli at Rome, 
a richly decorated figure carved in wood, is 


- BAMBOO. 

believed to have a miraculous virtue in cur¬ 
ing diseases. Bambinos are set up for the 
adoration of the faithful in many places in 
Catholic countries. 

Bambocciades (bam-boch-adz'), pictures, 
generally grotesque, of common, rustic, or 
low life, such as those of Peter Van Laar, 
a Dutch painter of the 17th century, who 
on account of his deformity was called 
Bamboccio (cripple). Teniers is the great 
master of this style. 

Bamboo', the common name of the arbor¬ 
escent grasses belonging to the genus Bam- 
busa. There are many species, belonging 
to the warmer parts of Asia, Africa, and 



1, Bamboo (B. arundinacea ), showing its mode of growth. 

2, Flowers, leaves, and stem on a larger scale. 

America, and growing from a few feet to as 
much as 100, requiring much moisture to 
thrive properly. The best-known species 
is B. arundinacea, common in tropical and 
sub tropical regions. From the creeping 
underground rhizome, which is long, thick, 
and jointed, spring several round jointed 
stalks, which send out from their joints 
several shoots, the stalks also being armed 
at their joints with one or two sharp rigid 
spines. The oval leaves, 8 or 9 inches long, 
are placed on short footstalks. The flowers 
grow in large panicles from the joints of 
the stalk. Some stems grow to 8 or 10 
inches in diameter, and are so hard and 
durable as to be used for building purposes. 
The smaller stalks are used for walkiner- 

362 









BAMBOOK 


BANBRIDGE. 


sticks, flutes, &c.; and indeed the plant is 
used for innumerable purposes in the East 
Indies, China, and other Eastern countries. 
Cottages are almost wholly made of it; also, 
bridges, boxes, water-pipes, ladders, fences, 
bows and arrows, spears, baskets, mats, 
paper, masts for boats, &c. The young 
shoots are pickled and eaten (see Atchar), or 
otherwise used as food; the seeds of some 
species are also eaten. The substance called 
tabasheer is a siliceous deposit that gathers 
at the internodes of the stems. The bamboo 
is imported into Europe and America as a 
paper material as well as for other purposes. 

Bambook', a country in Western Africa 
between the Falemd and Senegal rivers, 
about 140 miles in length, by 80 to 100 in 
breadth. It is on the whole hilly and some¬ 
what rugged. The valleys and plains are 
remarkably fertile. The natives are Man- 
dingoes, mostly professed Mohammedans 
ruled by independent chieftains, most of 
whom acknowledge the supremacy of France. 
Gold and ivory are exchanged for European 
goods. 

Bambook-butter, shea-butter. 

Bam'borough Castle, an ancient English 
castle on the coast of Northumberland, for¬ 
merly with connected estate the property 
of the Forsters, and forfeited to the crown 
in 1715, both being purchased by Lord 
Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and bequeathed 
by him for charitable purposes. 

Bambu'sa. See Bamboo. 

Bam'ian, a valley and pass of Afghanis¬ 
tan, the latter at an elevation of 8496 feet, 
the only known pass over the Hindu Kush 
for artillery and heavy transport. The val¬ 
ley is one of the chief centres of Buddhist 
worship, and contains two remarkable co¬ 
lossal statues and other ancient monuments. 

Bamo. See Bhamo. 

Bampton Lectures, a course of lectures 
established in 1751 by John Bampton, canon 
of Salisbury, who bequeathed certain pro¬ 
perty to the University of Oxford for the 
endowment of eight divinity lectures to be 
annually delivered. The subjects prescribed 
are mainly connected with the evidences of 
Christianity, and the lecturer must have 
taken the degree of M.A. at Oxford or 
Cambridge. The first course of lectures was 
delivered in 1780, and they have been de¬ 
livered every year since, with the excep¬ 
tions of 1834, 1835, and 1841. Among the 
more remarkable lectures were those by Dr. 
White in 1784, by Dr. Mant in 1812, by 
Reginald Heber in 1815, Whately in 1822, 

363 


Milman in 1827, Dr. Hampden in 1832, 
Mr. Mansel in 1858, and Canon Liddon in 
1866. A similar course of lectures, the 
Hulsean, is annually delivered at Cam¬ 
bridge. 

Ban, in political law, is equivalent to 
excommunication in ecclesiastical. In Teu¬ 
tonic history the ban was an edict of inter¬ 
diction or proscription: thus, to put a prince 
under the ban of the empire was to divest 
him of his dignities, and to interdict all in¬ 
tercourse and all offices of humanity with 
the offender. Sometimes whole cities have 
been put under the ban, that is deprived of 
their rights and privileges. 

Ban, anciently, a title given to the mili¬ 
tary chiefs who guarded the eastern marches 
of Hungary, now the title of the governor 
of Croatia and Slavonia, a division of the 
kingdom of Hungary. A province over 
which a ban is placed is called banat. 

Bana'na, a plant of the genus Musa, nat. 
order Musacete, being M. sapientum, while 
the plantain is M. paradisidca. It is ori¬ 
ginally indigenous to the East Indies, and 
an herbaceous plant with an underground 
stem. The apparent stem, which is some¬ 
times as high as 30 feet, is formed of the 
closely compacted sheaths of the leaves. The 
leaves are 6 to 10 feet long and 1 or more 
broad, with a strong midrib, from which the 
veins are given off at right angles; they 
are used for thatch, basket-making, &c., be¬ 
sides yielding a useful fibre. The spikes 
of the flowers grow nearly 4 feet long, in 
bunches, covered with purple - coloured 
bracts. The fruit is 4 to 10 or 12 inches 
long, and 1 inch or more in diameter; it 
grows in large bunches, weighing often from 
40 to 80 lbs. The pulp is soft and of a lus¬ 
cious taste; when ripe it is eaten raw or 
fried in slices. The banana is cultivated in 
tropical and sub-tropical countries, and is 
an important article of food. Manilla hemp 
is the product of a species of banana. 

Bana'na, an African port, belonging to 
the Congo Free State, situated at the mouth 
of the river Congo. 

Banana-bird, a pretty insessorial bird 
(Icterus leucopteryx), a native of the West 
Indies and the warmer parts of America. 
It is a lively bird, easily domesticated, 
tawny and black in colour, with white bars 
upon the wings. 

Banat. See Ban. 

Ban'bridge, a town of Ireland, county 
Down, 22 miles s.w. of Belfast, on the Bann. 
The manufacture of linen is carried on to 



BANBURY-BANDELLO. 


a great extent in town and neighbourhood. 
Pop. 6000. 

Banbury (ban'be-ri), a town of England, 
in Oxford, long celebrated for its cheese, its 
cakes, and its ale; a pari. bor. till 1885, and 
now giving name to a pari. div. of the county. 
Pop. 3600. 

Banca, an island belonging to the Dutch 
East Indies, between Sumatra and Borneo, 
130 miles long, with a width varying from 
10 to 30; pop. 62,000, of which a consider¬ 
able proportion are Chinese. It is cele¬ 
brated for its excellent tin, of which the 
annual yield is above 4000 tons; but it pro¬ 
duces nothing else of any importance. 

Banco, in commerce, a term employed to 
designate the money in which the banks of 
some countries keep or kept their accounts, 
in contradistinction to the current money 
of the place, which might vary in value or 
consist of light and foreign coins. The term 
was applied to the Hamburg bank accounts 
before the adoption (in 1873) of the new 
German coinage. The mark banoo had a 
value of Is. 5^d .; but there was no corres¬ 
ponding coin. See Bank. 

Ban'croft, George, American historian, 
born near Worcester, Mass., in 1800. He 
was educated at Harvard and in Germany, 
where he made the acquaintance of many 
literary men of note. In 1824 he published 
a translation of Heeren’s Politics of An¬ 
cient Greece, and a small volume of poems, 
and was also meditating and collecting 
materials for a history of the United States. 
Between 1834 and 1840 three volumes of 
his history were published. In 1845 he was 
appointed secretary of the navy, and effected 
many reforms and improvements in that 
department. He was American ambassador 
to England from 1846 to 1849, when the 
University of Oxford conferred on him the 
honorary degree of D.C.L. He took the 
opportunity while in Europe to perfect his 
collections on American history. He re¬ 
turned to New York in 1849, and began 
to prepare for the press the fourth and fifth 
volumes of his history, which appeared in 
1852. The sixth appeared in 1854, the 
seventh in 1858, the eighth soon after, but 
the ninth did not appear till 1866. From 
1867 to 1874 he was minister plenipoten¬ 
tiary at the court of Berlin. The tenth and 
last volume of his great work appeared in 
1874. An additional section appeared first as 
a separate work in 1882: History of the For¬ 
mation of the Constitution of the U. States, 
and the whole came oqt in 6 vols. in 1884-5, 


Mr. Bancroft settled in Washington on 
returning from Germany in 1875, and died 
there in a serene old age, Jan. 17, 1891, in 
his 91st year. 

Ban'croft, Richard, born in Lancashire 
1544, died 1610. studied at Cambridge, en¬ 
tered the church, and rose rapidly during 
the reign of Elizabeth till lie obtained the 
see of London in 1597. James I. made 
him Archbishop of Canterbury on the death 
of Whitgift. He suppressed the Puritans 
mercilessly, and they in return never ceased 
to abuse him. 

Banda, a town and district of the North- 
Western Provinces of India. The town 
stands on a plain on the right bank of the 
Ken river, 95 miles s.w. from Allahabad, 
and is a considerable cotton-mart. Pop. 
28,974.—Area of district 3061 sq. miles; 
pop. 698,608. 

Bandage, a surgical wrapper of some kind 
applied to a limb or other portion of the 
body to keep parts in position, exert a pres¬ 
sure, or for other purpose. To be able to 
apply a bandage suitably in the case of an 
accident is a highly useful accomplishment, 
which, through the teaching of ambulance 
sfirgery now so common, may be easily ac¬ 
quired. 

Banda Islands, a group belonging to 
Holland, Indian Archipelago, south of Ce¬ 
ram, Great Banda, the largest, being 12 miles 
long by 2 broad. They are beautiful islands, 
of volcanic origin, yielding quantities of 
nutmeg. Goenong Api, or Eire Mountain, 
is a cone-shaped volcano which rises 2320 
feet above the sea. Pop. 6700. 

Bandajan', a pass over a range of the 
Himalayas, Kashmir state, 14,854 feet 
above sea-level. 

Bandan'na, a variety of silk handkerchief 
having a uniformly dyed ground, usually 
of bright red or blue, ornamented with 
white or yellow circular, lozenge-shaped, 
or other simple figures produced by dis¬ 
charging the ground colour. 

Banda Oriental. See Uruguay. 

Bandel'lo, Matteo, an Italian writer-of 
novelle or tales, born about 1480, died about 
1562. He was, in his youth, a Dominican 
monk, and having been banished from Italy 
as a partisan of the French, Henry II. of 
France gave him in 1550 the bishopric of 
Agen. He left the administration of his 
diocese to the Bishop of Grasse, and em¬ 
ployed himself, at the advanced age of 
seventy, in the completion of his novelle. 
He also wrote poetry, but his fame rests on 


BANDE NOIRE-BANFF. 


his novelte, which are in the style of Boc¬ 
caccio, and have been made use of by Shak- 
spere, Massinger, and Beaumont and 
Fletcher. 

Bande Noire (band nwar), the name given 
when the revolution in France had entailed 
the confiscation of much ecclesiastical pro¬ 
perty, also many castles and residences of 
the emigrant and resident nobility, to a 
number of speculators who bought up the 
edifices, &c., in order to demolish them and 
turn their materials to profit. They were 
so called on account of their disregard of 
sacred property, of art, antiquity, and his¬ 
torical associations. 

Band-fish, the popular name of fishes of 
the genus Cepola, from their long, flat, thin 
bodies. C. rubescens,& very fragile creature, 
is sometimes cast up on British shores. Also 
called Snake-fish, Ribbon-fish. 

Ban'dicoot, the Mus giganteus, the largest 
known species of rat, attaining the weight 
of 2 or 3 lbs., and the length, including the 
tail, of 24 to 30 inches. It is a native of 
India, and is very abundant in Ceylon. Its 
flesh is said to be delicate and to resemble 
young pork, and is a favourite article of 
diet with the coolies. It is destructive to 
rice fields and gardens.—The name is also 
given to a family of Australian marsupials. 
The most common species (Perameles na- 
suta), the long-nosed bandicoot, measures 
about 1^ foot from the tip of the snout to 
the origin of the tail, and in general appear¬ 
ance bears a considerable resemblance to a 
large overgrown rat. 

Bandinel'li, Baccio, Italian sculptor, born 
at Florence 1493, died there 1560. He 
was jealous of and strove to rival Michael 
Angelo. Among his works are a Hercules 
and Cacus, the dead body of Christ held up 
by an angel, Adam and Eve, &c. 

Ban'dit, Italian bandito , originally an 
exile, banished man, or outlaw, and hence, 
as persons outlawed frequently adopted the 
profession of brigand or highwayman, the 
word came to be synonymous with brigand, 
and is now applied to members of the or¬ 
ganized gangs which infest some districts of 
Italy, Sicily, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. 

Band of Hope, a name given to societies 
of young persons pledged to teetotalism. 

Ban'doleer, a large leathern belt or bald- 
rick, to which were attached a bag for balls 
and a number of pipes or cases of wood or 
metal covered with leather, each containing 
a charge of gunpowder. It was worn by 
ancient musketeers and hung from the left 

365 


shoulder under the right arm with the ball 
bag at the lower extremity, and the pipes 
suspended on either side. The name is 
sometimes given to the small cases them¬ 
selves, now superseded by cartridges. 

Ban'doline, a gummy perfumed substance 
used to impart gloss and stiffness to the 
hair. 

Ban'don, a town, Ireland, co. Cork, on 
both sides of the Bandon. Pop. 3997. 

Bands, a small article of clerical dress 
made of linen going round the neck and 
hanging down in front for a short distance 
in two pieces with square ends, supposed to 
be a relic of the amice. 

Baneberry, Actaia spicdta , a European 
plant, order Ranunculacea?, local in Eng¬ 
land, with a spike of white flowers and 
black, poisonous berries. Two American 
species are considered remedies for rattle¬ 
snake bite. 

Baner (ba-nar'), Johan Gustafsson, a 
Swedish general in the Thirty Years’ war, 
born 1596, died 1641. He made his first 
campaigns in Poland and Russia, and ac¬ 
companied Gustavus Adolphus, who held 
him in high esteem, to Germany. After 
the death of Gustavus in 1632 he had the 
chief command of the Swedish army, and 
in 1634 invaded Bohemia, defeated the 
Saxons at Wittstock, 24th September, 1636, 
and took Torgau. He ravaged Saxony 
again in 1639, gained another victory at 
Chemnitz, and in 1640 defeated Piccolo- 
mini. In January, 1641, he very nearly 
took Ratisbon by surprise. 

Banff (bamf), county town of Banffshire, 
Scotland, a seaport on the Moray Firth at 
the mouth of the Deveron. It is well built, 
carries on some ship-building, and has a rope 
and sail work, a brewery, &c., with a fishing 
and shipping trade. Near the town are the 
County Lunatic Asylum, and Duff House, 
the seat of the Earl of Fife; on the east 
side of the Deveron is the town of Macduff, 
where an entensive fishing trade is carried 
on. Banff is one of the Elgin burghs, 
which together return a member to Parlia¬ 
ment. Pop. of pari, burgh, which includes 
Macduff, 8841 ; Banff portion, 4255.—The 
county has an area of 439,219 acres. In 
the south it is mountainous; but the nor¬ 
thern part is comparatively low and fer¬ 
tile; principal rivers, the Spey and Deveron; 
principal mountains, Cairngorm (4095 ft.) 
and Ben Macdhui (4296 ft.), on its southern 
boundary. Little wheat is raised, the prin¬ 
cipal crops being barley, oats, turnips, and 



BANG — 

potatoes. Fishing is an important industry; 
as is also the distilling of whisky. Serpen¬ 
tine abounds in several places, especially at 
Portsoy, where it is known as ‘Portsoy 
marble,’ and Scotch topazes or cairngorm 
stones are found on the mountains in the 
south. Banffshire returns one member to 
Parliament. Pop. 1891, 64,167. 

Bang. See Bhang. 

Bangalore', a town of Hindustan, capital 
of Mysore, and giving its name to a con¬ 
siderable district in the east of Mysore 
state. The town stands on a healthy 
plateau 3000 feet above sea-level, has a 
total area of nearly 14 square miles, and is 
one of the pleasantest British stations in 
India. In the old town stands the fort, re¬ 
constructed by Hyder Ali in 1761, and 
taken by Lord Cornwallis in 1791. Under 
English administration the town has greatly 
prospered in recent times. There are manu¬ 
factures of silks, cotton cloth, carpets, gold 
and silver lace, &c. Pop. 155,857. The 
Bangalore district has an area of nearly 
3000 square miles, of which more than half 
represent cultivable land. Pop. 669,139. 

Bangkok', or Bankok, the capital of the 
Kingdom of Siam, extending for several 
miles on both sides of the Menam, which 
falls into the Gulf of Siam about 15 miles 
below. The inner city occupies an island 
surrounded with walls and bastions; and 
contains the palace of the king and other 
important buildings. The dwellings of the 
common people are of wood or bamboo often 
raised on piles; a large portion of the popu¬ 
lation, however, dwell in boats or wooden 
houses erected on bamboo rafts moored in 
the river, and forming a floating town. 
Temples are numerous and lavishly deco¬ 
rated. Houses in the European style are 
beginning to be erected, and among other 
advances recently made are the introduction 
of the telegraph and telephone, gas, fire- 
engines, and omnibuses. The trade, both 
inland and foreign, is very extensive, the 
exports consisting chiefly of rice, sugar, 
silk, cotton, tobacco, pepper, sesame, ivory, 
aromatic wood, cabinet woods, tin, hides, 
&c.; and the imports consisting chiefly of 
British cotton, woollen, and other goods. 
Pop. estimated at 500,000, of whom about 
a half are Chinese. 

Bangles, ornamental rings worn upon the 
arms and ankles in India and Africa. 

Ban'gor, a city of North Wales, in Caer¬ 
narvonshire, picturesquely situated near the 
northern entrance of the Menai Strait. It 


- BANIM. 

appears to have possessed a cathedral in the 
sixth century, though the present cathedral 
—the third—only dates from the reign of 
Henry VII. There is also a university 
college. Since the construction of the Menai 
Bridge, Bangor has risen into some import¬ 
ance as a popular resort; its principal trade 
is in the export of slates from the neighbour¬ 
ing quarries. Pop. 1891, 9892. 

Ban'gor, a seaport town, Ireland, county 
Down, on the south side of Belfast Lough. 
Principal trade: cotton, linen, and em¬ 
broideries. Pop. 3002. 

Ban'gor, a port of the United States, in 
Maine, on the w. side of Penobscot Elver, 
a flourishing and pleasantly situated town, 
and one of the largest lumber depots in the 
world. The river is navigable to the town 
for vessels of the largest size. Pop. 19,103. 

Bango'rian Controversy, a controversy 
stirred up by a sermon preached before 
George I. in 1717 by Dr. Hoadly, bishop of 
Bangor, from the text ‘ My kingdom is 
not of this world,’ in which the bishop con¬ 
tended in the most pronounced manner for 
the spiritual nature of Christ’s kingdom. 
The controversy was carried on with great 
heat for many years, and resulted in an 
enormous collection of pamphlets. 

Bangs'ring. See Banxring. 

Bangweo'lo, Lake, in South Africa, the 
southernmost of the great lake reservoirs of 
the Congo, discovered by Livingstone in 
1868, an oval-shaped shallow sheet of water, 
said to be 150 miles in length along its 
greater axis from east to west, and about 
75 miles in width, but its exact limits are 
uncertain. 

Ban'ian, or Ban'yan, an Indian trader 
or merchant, one engaged in commerce 
generally, but more particularly one of the 
great traders of Western India, as in the 
seaports of Bombay, Kurrachee, &c.. who 
carry on a large trade by means of cara¬ 
vans with the interior of Asia, and with 
Africa by vessels. They form a class of the 
\ aisya caste, wear a peculiar dress, and are 
strict in the observance of fasts and in 
abstaining from the use of flesh. Hence— 
Banian days, days in which sailors in the 
navy had no flesh meat served out to them. 
Banian days are now abolished, but the 
term is still applied to days of poor fare. 

Banian-tree. See Banyan. 

Ba'nim, John, an Irish novelist, drama¬ 
tist, and poet, born in 1798, died 1842. 
His chief early work was a poem, The 
Celt’s Paradise (1821). Having settled in 

366 



BANK. 


BANISHMENT 


London, he made various contributions to 
magazines and to the stage; but his fame 
rests on his novels, particularly the O’Hara 
Tales, in which Irish life is admirably por¬ 
trayed. In these, as in some of his other 
publications, his brother, Michael Banim 
(born 1796, died 1874), had an important 
share, if not an equal claim to praise. 

Banishment. See Exile. 

Ban'jarmassin, a district and town in the 
south-east of Borneo, under the government 
of the Dutch. The town is situated on an 
arm of the Banjar, about 14 miles above its 
mouth, in a marshy locality, the houses 
being built on piles, and many of them on 
rafts. Exports: pepper, benzoin, bezoar, 
ratans, dragon’s-blood, birds’-nests, &c.; 
imports : rice, salt, sugar, opium, &c. Pop. 
25,000 to 30,000. 

Ban'jo (a negro corruption of bandore, 
It. pandora, from L. pandoura, a three¬ 
stringed instrument), 
the favourite musical 
instrument of the ne¬ 
groes of the Southern 
States of America. It 
is six-stringod, has a 
body like a tambour¬ 
ine and a neck like a 
guitar, and is played 
by stopping the strings 
with the fingers of the Banjo, 

left hand and twitch¬ 
ing or striking them with the fingers of the 
right. The upper -or octave string, how¬ 
ever, is never stopped. 

Banjoemas (ban'yo-mas), town in Java, 
near the centre of the island, well built and 
of commercial importance; it is 22 miles from 
the coast, and is the residence of a Dutch 
governor. Pop. 9000. 

Bank, primarily an establishment for the 
deposit, custody, and repayment on demand, 
of money ; and obtaining the bulk of its 
profits from the investment of sums thus 
derived and not in immediate demand. 
The term is a derivative of the banco or 
bench of the early Italian money dealers, 
being analogous in its origin to the terms 
trapezitai ( trapeza , a bench or table) applied 
to the ancient Greek money-changers, and 
mensarii ( mensa , a table) applied to the 
public bankers of Rome. 

In respect of constitution there is a broad 
division of banks into public and private; 
public banks including such establishments 
as are under any special state or municipal 
control or patronage, or whose capital is in 

367 


the form of stock or shares which are 
bought and sold in the open market; private 
banks embracing those which are carried on 
by one or more individuals without special 
authority or charter and under the laws 
regulating ordinary trading companies. In 
respect of function three kinds of banks 
may be discriminated: (1) banks of deposit 
merely, receiving and returning money at 
the convenience of depositors ; (2) banks 
of discount or loan, borrowing money on 
deposit and lending it in the discount of 
promissory notes, bills of exchange, and 
negotiable securities; (3) banks of circula¬ 
tion or issue, which give currency to pro¬ 
missory notes of their own, payable to 
bearer and serving as a medium of exchange 
within the sphere of their banking opera¬ 
tions. The more highly organized banks 
discharge all three functions, but all modern 
banks unite the two first. For the success¬ 
ful working of a banking establishment 
certain resources other than the deposits 
are of course necessary, and the subscribed 
capital, that is the money paid up by share¬ 
holders on their shares and forming the 
substantial portion of their claim to public 
credit, is held upon a different footing to 
the sums received from depositors. It is 
usually considered that for sound banking 
this capital should not be traded with for 
the purpose of making gain in the same 
way as the monies deposited in the bank; 
and it is for the most part invested in 
government or other securities subject to 
little fluctuation in value and readily con¬ 
vertible into money. But in any case 
prudence demands that a reserve be kept 
sufficient to meet all probable requirements 
of customers in event of commercial crises 
or minor panics. The reserve of the bank¬ 
ing department of the Bank of England is 
always in coin, or in notes against which 
an equivalent value of coin and bullion is 
lying in the issue department. In other 
English banks the reserve is usually kept 
partly in gold and partly in government 
stocks and Bank of England notes; but it 
sometimes lies as a deposit in the Bank of 
England. The working capital proper of a 
bank is constituted by monies on deposit, 
for which the bank may or may not pay 
interest; the advantages of security, of ease 
in the transmission of payments, &c., being 
regarded in the cases of banks little affected 
by competition as a sufficient return to the 
depositor. Thus the Bank of England pays 
no interest on deposits, while the oontrary 




BANK. 


practice has prevailed in Scotland since 
1729. 

Of the methods of making profit upon 
the money of depositors, one of the most 
common is to advance it in the discounting 
of bills of exchange not having long periods 
(seldom more than 3 months with the Bank 
of England) to run; the banker receiving 
the amounts of the bills from the acceptors 
when the bills arrive at maturity. Loans 
or advances are also often made by bankers 
upon exchequer bills or other government 
securities, on railway debentures or the 
stock of public companies of various kinds, 
as well as upon goods lying in public ware¬ 
houses, the dock-warrant or certificate of 
ownership being transferred to the banker 
in security. In the case of a well-established 
credit they may be advanced upon notes of 
hand without other security. Money is less 
commonly advanced by bankers upon mort¬ 
gages on land, in which the money loaned is 
almost invariably locked up for a number of 
years. To banks of issue a further source of 
profit is open in their note circulation, inas¬ 
much as the bank is enabled to lend these 
notes, or promises to pay, as if they were so 
much money and to receive interest on the 
loan accordingly, as well as to make a profit¬ 
able use of the money or property that may 
be received in exchange for its notes, so long 
as the latter remain in circulation. It is 
obvious, however, that this interest on its 
loaned notes may not run over a very 
extended period, in that the person to whom 
they are issued may at once return them to 
the bank to lie there as a deposit and so 
may actually draw interest on them from 
the bank of issue; or he may present them 
to be exchanged for coin, or by putting 
them at once into circulation may ensure a cer¬ 
tain number speedily finding their way back 
through other hands or other banks to the 
establishment from which he received them. 
A considerable number of the notes issued 
will, however, be retained in circulation at 
the convenience of the public as a medium 
of exchange; and on this circulating portion 
a clear profit accrues. This rapid return of 
notes through other banks, &c., in exchange 
for portions of the reserve of the issuing 
bank, is one of the restraints upon an issue 
of notes in excess of the ability of the bank 
to meet them. In Britain a more obviotis 
restraint upon an unlimited note issue, origi¬ 
nating partly in a desire for greater security, 
partly in the belief that the note augmenta¬ 
tion of the currency might lead to harmful 


economic results in its influence upon prices, 
is to be found in the bank acts of 1844 
and 1845, which impose upon banks of issue 
the necessity of keeping an equivalent in 
gold for all notes issued beyond a certain 
fixed amount. The wisdom of these legal re¬ 
strictions, which are not uniform through¬ 
out the kingdom, and the desirability of the 
acquisition and control by the state of the 
whole business of issue, are still matters of 
debate. 

In specific relation to his customer the 
banker occupies the position of debtor to 
creditor, holding money which the custo¬ 
mer may demand at any time in whole or 
in part by means of a cheque payable at 
sight on presentation during banking hours. 
For the refusal to cash a cheque from the 
erroneous supposition that he has no funds 
of his customer’s in his hands, or for 
misleading statements respecting the posi¬ 
tion in which the bank stands, the banker 
is legally responsible. Moreover, the law 
regards him as bound to know his cus¬ 
tomer's signature, and the loss falls upon 
him in event of his cashing a forged cheque. 
In their relations to the community, the 
chief services rendered by banks are the 
following:—By receiving deposits of money, 
and massing in sums efficient for extensive 
enterprises the smaller savings of indi¬ 
viduals, they are the means of keeping fully 
and constantly employed a large portion of 
the capital of the community which, but for 
their agency, would be unproductive; they 
are the means by which the surplus capital 
of one part of a country is transferred to 
another where it may be advantageously 
employed in stimulating industry; they 
enable vast and numerous money transac¬ 
tions to be carried on without the interven¬ 
tion of coin or notes at all, thus obviating 
trouble, risk, and expense. The mechanism 
by which the last of these benefits is 
secured is to be found in perfection in the 
London Clearing House. 

Although banking operations on a con¬ 
siderable scale appear to have been con¬ 
ducted by the ancients, modern banking 
must be regarded as having had an inde¬ 
pendent origin in the reviving civilization 
of the middle ages. In the twelfth century 
almost the whole trade of Europe was in 
the hands of the Italian cities, and it was in 
these that the need of bankers was first 
felt. The earliest public bank, that of 
Venice, established in 1171 and existing 
down to the dissolution of the republic in 

368 


BANK. 


1797, was for some time a bank of deposit 
only, the government being responsible for 
the deposits, and the whole capital being in 
effect a public loan. In the early periods 
of the operations of this bank deposits 
could not be withdrawn, but the depositor 
had a credit at the bank to the amount 
deposited, this credit being transferable to 
another person in place of money payment. 
Subsequently deposits were allowed to be 
withdrawn, the original system proving 
inconvenient outside the Venetian bound¬ 
aries. It was, however, less from the Bank 
of Venice than from the Florentine bankers 
of the 13th and 14th centuries that modern 
banking specially dates, the magnitude of 
their operations being indicated by the fact 
that between 1430 and 1433, 76 bankers of 
Florence issued on loan nearly 5,000,000 
gold florins. The Bank of St. George at 
Genoa also furnished a striking chapter in 
financial history. The important Bank of 
Amsterdam, taken by Adam Smith as a 
type of the older banks, was established in 
1609, and owed its origin to the fluctuation 
and uncertainty induced by the clipped and 
worn currency. The object of the institu¬ 
tion (established under guarantee of the 
city) was to give a certain and unquestion¬ 
able value to a bill on Amsterdam; and for 
this purpose the various coins were received 
in deposit at the bank at their real value in 
standard coin, less a small charge for re¬ 
coinage and expense of management. For 
the amount deposited a credit was opened 
on the books of the bank, by the transfer of 
which payments could be made, this so-called 
bank money being of uniform value as re¬ 
presenting money at the mint standard. It 
bore, therefore, an agio or premium above 
the worn coin currency, and it was legally 
compulsory to make all payments of 600 
guilders and upwards in bank money. The 
deposits were supposed to remain in the 
coffers of the bank, but they were secretly 
traded with in the 18th century till the 
collapse of the bank in 1790. Banks of 
similar character were established at Nurem¬ 
berg and other towns, the most important 
being the bank of Hamburg, founded in 
1619. In England there was no correspond¬ 
ing institution, the London merchants being 
in the habit of lodging their money at the 
Mint in the Tower, until Charles I. appro¬ 
priated the whole of it (£200,000) in 1640. 
Thenceforth they lodged it with the gold¬ 
smiths, who began to do banking business 
in a small way, encouraging deposits by 
VOL. 1. 369 


allowing interest (id. a day) for their use, 
lending money for short periods, discounting 
bills, &c. The bank-note was first invented 
and issued in 1690 by the Bank of Sweden, 
founded by Palmstruck in 1688, and one of 
the most successful of banking establish¬ 
ments. About the same time the banks of 
England and Scotland began to take shape, 
opening up a new era in the financing of 
commerce and industry. 

The Bank of England, the most important 
banking establishment in the world, was pro¬ 
jected by William Paterson, who was after¬ 
wards the promoter of the disastrous Darien 
scheme. It was the first public bank in the 
United Kingdom, and was chartered in 1694 
by an act which, among other things, 
secured certain recompenses to such persons 
as should advance the sum of £1,500,000 
towards carrying on the war against 
France. Subscribers to the loan became, 
under the act, stockholders, to the amount 
of their respective subscriptions, in the 
capital stock of a corporation, denominated 
the Governor and Company of the Bank of 
England. The company thus formed, ad¬ 
vanced to the government £1,200,000 at 
an interest of 8 per cent—the government 
making an additional bonus or allowance to 
the bank of £4000 annually for the manage¬ 
ment of this loan (which, in fact, constituted 
the capital of the bank), and for settling the 
interest and making transfers, &c., among 
the various stockholders. This bank, like 
that of Venice, was thus originally an engine 
of the government, and not a mere com¬ 
mercial establishment. Its capital has been 
added to from time to time, the original 
capital of £1,200,000 having increased to 
£14,553,000 in 1816, since which no further 
augmentation has taken place. There exists 
besides, however, a variable ‘rest’ of over 
£3,000,000. The charter of the bank was ori¬ 
ginally granted for eleven years certain, or till 
a year’s notice after August 1,1705. It was 
subsequently renewed for various periods in 
1697, 1708, 1713, 1742, 1764, 1781, 1800, 
1833, and 1844, certain conditions which 
the bank had to fulfil being specified at 
each renewal. On this last occasion it 
was continued till twelve months’ notice 
from 1855. At the same time the issue 
department of the bank was established as 
distinct from the general banking depart¬ 
ment, the sole business intrusted to the 
former being the issue of notes. By this 
arrangement the bank was authorized to 
issue notes to the value of £14,000,000 upon 

24 


BANK. 


securities specially set apart, the most im¬ 
portant of the securities being the sum of 
£11,015,100 due to the bank by the govern¬ 
ment, together with so much of the coin 
and bullion then held by the bank as was 
not required by the banking department. 
The bank has since been permitted to in¬ 
crease its issue on securities to £15,750,000, 
but for every note that the issue department 
may issue beyond the total sum of 
£15,750,000 an equivalent amount of coin 
or bullion must be paid into the coffers of 
the bank. The Bank of England notes are, 
therefore, really equivalent to, and at any 
time convertible into gold, as it is in the 


utmost degree improbable that any drain on 
the treasure in the bank will reduce the 
outstanding notes below £15,750,000. They 
are (like all English bank-notes) of the value 
of £5 and upwards, and are legal tender 
throughout England. Notes once issued by 
the bank and returned to it are not reissued 
but are destroyed — a system adopted in 
order to facilitate the keeping of an account 
of the numbers of the notes in circulation, 
and so prevent forgery. 

In compliance also with the act of 1844 
the bank is compelled to publish a weekly 
account, of which the following is a speci¬ 
men :— 


Dr. 

Notes issued, 


Issue Department : Week ending June 20, 1893. 


£36,343,275 


£36,343,275 


Government debt, .. 
Other securities. 

Gold coin and bullion, 
Silver bullion, 


Cr. 

£11,015,100 

5,184,900 

20,143,275 


£36,343,275 


Dr. 

Proprietors’ capital, 
Proprietors’ rest, 
Public deposits, 
Other deposits, 
Seven days’ bills, 


Banking Department. 


£14,553,000 

3,097,282 

5,803,699 

26,460,023 

177,910 

£50,091,914 


Government securities, 
Other securities. 

Notes,. 

Coin,. 


Cr. 

£16,753,391 

19,468,751 

12,363,885 

1,505,887 


£50,091,914 


The total of the notes given out by the 
issue department is called the ‘ issue circula¬ 
tion,’ the portion of it in the hands of the 
public being the ‘active circulation,’ and 
that still in the banking department being 
the ‘ note reserve.’ This ‘ note reserve ’ 
represents really the amount of bullion in 
the issue department available for the use 
of the banking department. Of the other 
items in the account it may be noted that 
the proprietors’ ‘rest’ is a varying surplus 
increased always by accumulated profits up 
to April 5th and October 10th, when the 
bank dividends are paid to the shareholders; 
and that the public deposits, which include 
sums lodged on account of the customs, 
inland revenue, &c., increase through revenue 
receipts until the dividend terms in January, 
April, July, and October. The other or 
private deposits comprise those of bankers, 
merchants, and other persons. An increase 
in these private deposits indicates an in¬ 
crease of monetary ease, while a decrease 
informs us that bankers, merchants, and 
traders have calls upon them for money. 
A better indication of the demand for 
money is furnished, however, by the ad¬ 
vances on commercial securities, and it is by 


this and the condition of the reserve that the 
bank rate of discount is regulated. When 
the reserve is high and the advances moder¬ 
ate the discount rate is low, and it is raised 
according as the reserve falls and advances 
are more in request, especially during an 
adverse foreign exchange and drain of gold. 
Gold is thus restrained from going abroad, 
and its influx into the country is encouraged. 
In addition to the profit which the bank 
may make by ordinary banking business, it re¬ 
ceives an allowance for the management of the 
national debt, &c., at the rate of £300 per 
million on £6,000,000, and £150 per million 
on all debt above that sum. It also derives 
a profit from the foreign coin and bullion 
brought to it, for which it pays £3, 17s. 9d., 
or 1^(7. per ounce less than the real value. 

The management of the bank is in the 
hands of a governor, deputy-governor, and 
twenty-four directors, elected by stock¬ 
holders who have held £500 of stock for six 
months previous to the election. A director 
is required to hold £2000, a deputy-governor 
£3000, and a governor £4000 of the stock. 
The court or board of directors meets every 
Thursday, when the weekly account is pre¬ 
sented. 


370 
















Bank. 


The other English banks consist of nu¬ 
merous joint-stock and private banks in 
London and the provinces, many of the pro¬ 
vincial establishments of both kinds having 
the right to issue notes. Private banks in 
London with not more than six partners 
have never been prevented from issuing 
notes, but they could not profitably com¬ 
pete with the Bank of England. The maxi¬ 
mum issues of the provincial banks are 
limited to a certain amount, against which 
they are not compelled to hold gold in re¬ 
serve, and they have no power to issue 
against specie in excess of the fixed circula¬ 
tion. Their actual issues are considerably 
below this amount. No union can take 
place between a joint-stock bank and a pri¬ 
vate bank, or between two joint-stock banks 
of issue, without one of them losing its 
issue. Their authorized circulation is about 
£6,000,000, but the actual circulation of 
these banks is now only about £3,500,000, 
distributed among about 100 private and 
about half that number of joint-stock banks. 
The notes of these banks are payable in 
Bank of England paper. The greater num¬ 
ber of joint-stock banks are of limited lia¬ 
bility, though their liability in respect of 
their notes is unlimited. Some of them have 
a number of branches. All the joint-stock 
banks allow interest on money deposited 
with them. The total paid-up capital and 
reserves of the English joint-stock banks is 
over £150,000,000. 

In Scotland there are no private banks, 
the only banks in that portion of the United 
Kingdom being ten joint-stock banks of 
issue, and their branches. By the act of 
1845 new banks of issue were prohibited, a 
monopoly being given to such establish¬ 
ments as existed in the year previous to 1st 
May, 1845. At the same time the issue of 
each was limited to the amount of its aver¬ 
age circulation during that year, together 
with the specie held at the head-office. Any 
bank issuing notes in excess of this limit is 
supposed to hold an equivalent amount of 
gold. The aggregate authorized circulation 
is now £2,676,350; the average actual cir¬ 
culation is about £5,850,000. The Bank of 
Scotland, established by act of Parliament 
in 1695, had for its original capital only 
£100,000,increased to£200,000 in 1744; but 
it now has a capital of £1,250,000 paid tip. It 
remained the only bank in Scotland till the 
Royal Bank of Scotland was established in 
1727, with an original capital of £151,000, 
which has grown to £2,000,000. The 

371 


British Linen Company was incorporated in 
1746, for the purpose of promoting the 
linen manufacture, but soon became a gen¬ 
eral banking company; capital, £1,000,000. 
These three banks claim to be by their 
charters banks of limited liability. All 
the other Scottish banks have been estab¬ 
lished within the present century. They 
are all incorporated by royal charter or 
act of Parliament, which enables them 
to sue and be sued as a corporation, and 
latterly they have all become banks of 
limited liability, except that their liability 
is not to be limited in respect to their note 
issue. The total paid-up capital of the 
Scotch banks is £9,000,000. A large num¬ 
ber of one-pound notes circulate in Scotland, 
thus tending to keep the requirements for 
gold low. From allowing a moderate rate 
of interest on money deposited with them, it 
is not uncommon for depositors in Scottish 
banks to lodge their money permanently as 
an investment; and the habit of keeping an 
account with a banker is much more gen¬ 
eral in Scotland than in England, branch 
offices of the banks being very numerous. 
Several of the Scotch banks have branch 
offices in London, but of course they cannot 
issue their own notes from these offices. 
The Scotch banks have enjoyed a high repu¬ 
tation for stability, and though public con¬ 
fidence was somewhat shaken by the failure 
of the Western Bank in 1857, and even 
more rudely by that of the City of Glasgow 
Bank in 1878, their shares are generally 
looked upon as a safe and remunerative in¬ 
vestment. Their total deposits amount to 
over £80,000,000. 

The banks in Ireland consist of one public 
or national bank, the Bank of Ireland, and 
of sundry joint-stock and private banks, 
The authorized note circulation is arranged 
on the same footing as that of the Scotch 
banks. If any bank discontinues its issue 
and issues notes of the Bank of Ireland, the 
circulation of the latter may be to an equal 
amount increased. The authorized circula¬ 
tion is £6,354,494, the actual circulation is 
sometimes a little above, sometimes a little 
below. The Bank of Ireland, which was 
established by charter in 1783 with similar 
privileges to those granted to the Bank of 
England, has lent the greater portion of 
its capital to government. Its capital is 
£2,769,230 (or £3,000,000 Irish); it has 
also a rest or reserve of over £1,000,000. 
The bank pays interest on money lodged 
for a stated period. 


BANK. 


Of all other banks the Bank of France 
is second in importance only to the Bank 
of England. It was established in the be¬ 
ginning of the present century, at first with 
a capital of 45,000,000 francs, and with the 
exclusive privilege in Paris of issuing notes 
payable to bearer, a privilege which was 
extended in 1848 to cover the whole of 
France. It has numerous branches in the 
larger towns, a number of these having 
been acquired in 1848, when certain joint- 
stock banks of issue were by government 
decree incorporated with the Bank of France, 
the capital of which was then increased to 
91,250,000 francs (£3,650,000), in 91,250 
shares of 1000 francs each. In 1857 the 
capital was doubled, and besides this it has 
a large surplus capital or rest. Like the 
Bank of England, it is a bank of deposit, 
discount, and circulation, and is a large 
creditor of the state. The government 
appoints the governor and the two deputy- 
governors, who are all required to be stock¬ 
holders. There is also a body of fifteen 
directors and three censors, nominated by 
the shareholders. The value of its note 
circulation is about £115,000,000. 

With regard to the banks in British colo¬ 
nies little need be said. All the more im¬ 
portant are joint-stock concerns, and they 
are carried on subject to acts passed by the 
respective colonial legislatures. Some of 
them have their headquarters in London, 
and have been established by English capi¬ 
tal. In Canada the banks are not allowed 
to issue notes of lower denominations than 
five dols., notes for small amounts up to 
four dols. being issued by the Dominion 
government; and the banking laws are such 
that there is no possibility of holders of 
bank-notes being losers by them. The total 
paid-up capital of the Canadian banks is 
about £12,000,000; their total deposits 
about £23,000,000. 

The more important of the banks of the 
United States are what are called national 
banks, established in accordance with an act 
passed in 1863. Associations of this kind 
at starting must invest some portion of 
their paid-up capital in government bonds, 
which pay them an interest of 4 per cent 
more or less. They then obtain from the 
government bureau, established for the pur¬ 
pose, 90 per cent of paper-money issues 
which they sign and pay out, this constitu¬ 
ting their note circulation. These banks 
pay no interest to depositors. Besides the 
notes of these banks a large portion of the 


currency of the United States consists of 
government notes issued from the national 
treasury. There are also banks chartered 
by the different states and private banks. 

Savings-banks are banks established for 
the receiving of small sums so as to be taken 
advantage of by the poorer classes, and they 
are carried on entirely for behoof of the 
depositors. They are of comparatively re¬ 
cent origin, one of the earliest having been 
an institution in which small sums were 
received and interest allowed on them, estab¬ 
lished by Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield, at Tot¬ 
tenham, near London, in 1803. The first 
savings-bank in Scotland was formed in 
1810 by the Rev. Henry Duncan, of Ruth- 
well, Dumfriesshire. In 1814 the Edin¬ 
burgh savings-bank was established on the 
same principles, and the system soon spread 
over the kingdom. The first act relating 
to savings-banks was passed in 1817. By 
it all deposits in savings-banks, as soon as 
they reached £50, were placed in the hands 
of the National Debt Commissioners, who 
allowed interest on them. In 1824 it was 
enacted that the deposits for the first year 
should not exceed £50, nor those in subse¬ 
quent years £30, the total deposits being 
limited to £150; also, that no more interest 
should be paid when the deposits, with 
compound interest accruing on them, stand¬ 
ing in the name of one individual should 
amount to £200. This enactment is still in 
force. The interest was fixed in 1880 at 
£3, depositors to receive £2, 15s. An act 
of 1833 had provided for the purchase of 
government annuities by depositors either 
for life or for a term of years; and by the 
act of 1844 the maximum limit of these 
was fixed at £30, allowing, however, a hus¬ 
band and a wife to hold separate annuities 
each of that amount. The minimum is £4. 
These banks are managed by local trustees, 
unpaid, and having no personal interest in 
the business. A new class of savings-banks, 
namely, post-office savings-banks, were estab¬ 
lished in Britain in connection with the 
money-order department of the post-office 
by an act of Parliament passed in 1861. Any 
sum not less than a shilling is received, so 
as not to exceed £30 in one year, or more 
than £150 in all; and when the principal 
amounts to £200, the payment of interest 
is to cease. Interest is paid on every com¬ 
plete pound at the rate of 2^ per cent. For 
the deposits the government is responsible, 
and they may be drawn from any post- 
office savings-bank in the kingdom. Being 

372 


BANK1VA FOWL 


BANKRUPT. 


exceedingly numerous and very convenient 
in every way these savings-banks have been 
a great success, and have caused the trans¬ 
ference to them of much of the funds for¬ 
merly in the trustees’ savings-banks. The 
total amount deposited in the latter class 
of banks in the United Kingdom is about 
£47,000,000, in the former over £50,000,000. 
By an act that came into operation in 1880 
any person desiring to invest in government 
stock any sum of from £10 to £100 can do 
so through the post-office banks at a trifling 
cost and obtain the dividend free of charge. 
Savings-banks are now well known in all 
civilized countries, and the good they have 
done is incalculable. In the U. States there 
is an enormous amount of money deposited 
in them. Post-office savings-banks have 
been proposed to be established in the States, 
but have not yet been so. In Canada, Aus¬ 
tralia, and other British colonies they are 
established, as well as savings-banks of sev¬ 
eral other kinds. School savings-banks are 
the most recent institutions of this kind, 
and have had a marked effect for good. 

Banki'va Fowl (Gallus bankiva), a fowl 
living wild in Northern India, Java, Su¬ 
matra, &c., believed to be the original of 
our common domestic fowls. 

Bankrupt (from It. banca, a bench, and 
Lat. ruptus, broken, in allusion to the 
benches formerly used by the money-lenders 
in Italy, which were broken in case of their 
failure), a person whom the law does or 
may take cognizance of as unable to pay 
his debts. Properly it is of narrower signi¬ 
fication than insolvent , an insolvent person 
simply being unable to pay all his debts. 
In England up till 1861 the term bankrupt 
was limited to an insolvent trader, and such 
traders were on a different footing from 
other insolvent persons, the latter not get¬ 
ting the same legal relief from their debts. 
In all civilized communities laws have been 
passed regarding bankruptcy. At present 
bankruptcy in England is regulated by the 
Bankruptcy Act of 1883, which has as its 
essential feature the intervention of the 
Board of Trade at all stages of the bank¬ 
ruptcy, with the object of obtaining full 
official supervision and control. A bank¬ 
ruptcy petition may be presented either by 
a creditor or a debtor. A creditor’s petition 
must be founded on a debt of not less than 
fifty pounds, due to one or more creditors, 
and on an ‘act of bankruptcy’ committed 
by the debtor within three months before 
the presentation of the petition, A debtor 


commits an act of bankruptcy if he makes 
a conveyance of his property to a trustee 
for the benefit of his creditors; if he makes 
a fraudulent transfer of any part of his 
property; if, to defeat or delay his creditors, 
he conceal himself either at home or abroad; 
if execution issued against him has been en¬ 
forced by seizure and sale of his goods under 
process in an action in any court; if he files 
in court a declaration of inability to pay 
his debts, or presents a bankruptcy petition 
against himself; if a creditor has obtained 
a final judgment against him for any amount 
and he fail to pay the judgment debt with¬ 
out satisfactory reason; or if the debtor 
gives notice to any of his creditors that he 
has suspended, or is about to suspend, pay¬ 
ment of his debts. In London jurisdiction 
in bankruptcy now rests with the High 
Court of Justice, while the county courts 
continue to have jurisdiction in bankruptcy 
outside the London district. When the 
court is satisfied as to the petition, a ‘ receiv¬ 
ing order’ is issued to protect the debtor's 
estate by constituting the official appointed 
by the Board of Trade receiver of the 
debtor’s property, and to stay the remedies 
of all creditors until the meeting of creditors. 
The debtor must make out a full statement 
of his affairs, accounting as best he can for 
his insolvency. The official receiver sum¬ 
mons the meeting of creditors, a summary 
of the debtor's affairs being sent to each 
creditor with the notice of the meeting, 
which is also advertised in the London Ga¬ 
zette. The creditors must send to the offi¬ 
cial receiver one day before the meeting 
sworn proofs of their claims to enable them 
to vote. At the meeting the creditors 
(unless the debtor’s proposal for a composi¬ 
tion or scheme be entertained) pass a reso¬ 
lution adjudging the debtor bankrupt, and 
appoint a trustee of the bankrupt’s property, 
with a committee of inspection selected 
from their own body to superintend the 
administration of the bankrupt’s property 
by the trustee, who divides the available 
realized assets amongst all creditors who 
have sent sworn proofs of claims. Bates, 
assessments, and taxes, and all wages or 
salary of a clerk, servant, labourer, or work¬ 
man during four months before the date of 
the receiving order not exceeding £50 are 
paid in priority to all other debts. The 
trustee is required to give satisfactory se¬ 
curity to the Board of Trade, by which his 
accounts are audited not less than twice in 
eaqh year, All moping received by the) 



BANKRUPT. 


trustee under the bankruptcy must be paid 
forthwith to an account kept at the Bank 
of England by the Board of Trade, called 
the ‘ Bankruptcy Estates Account.’ The 
debtor is bound to be publicly examined 
upon oath in court, and any creditor who 
has tendered a proof, or his representative, 
may take part in the examination. Until 
the debtor has passed his public examina¬ 
tion he cannot apply for an order of dis¬ 
charge, and upon proof of misdemeanour 
the court refuses or suspends the discharge. 
A bankrupt is disqualified from acting as 
member of parliament, justice of the peace, 
alderman, or overseer of the poor, or as a 
member of any school, highway, or burial 
board until the bankruptcy is annulled. 
An undischarged bankrupt obtaining credit 
to the extent of £20 or upwards from any 
person without informing such person of 
his status, is guilty of a misdemeanour. 
By the act of 1883 the creditors may at 
the first meeting resolve to entertain a pro¬ 
posal for a composition or scheme of ar¬ 
rangement of the debtor’s affairs, but the 
composition or scheme shall not be binding 
on the creditors, unless confirmed at a 
second meeting by a majority in number 
representing three-fourths in value of all 
the creditors who have proved. The com¬ 
position or scheme has then to be formally 
brought before the court for approval, 
which may be refused. A composition or 
scheme may be sanctioned by the court 
after the debtor’s adjudication as a bank¬ 
rupt, and in this case the bankruptcy is 
annulled. Though imprisonment for debt 
has been abolished, fraudulent bankrupts 
may be punished, and the conduct of prose¬ 
cutions for offences arising out of any bank¬ 
ruptcy proceeding falls to the public prose¬ 
cutor. The estates of persons dying insol¬ 
vent may be administered according to the 
law of bankruptcy. 

According to Scots law bankruptcy is 
notorious insolvency, that is, a public ac¬ 
knowledgment of inability to discharge obli¬ 
gations. By a judicial proceeding, called^ 
sequestration , authorized by the Court of 
Session or sheriff court, on the petition of 
the debtor himself with the concurrence 
of one creditor swearing to a debt of £50, 
two whose debts together amount to £70, 
or of any number of creditors whose debts 
together amount to £100; or on the peti¬ 
tion of a creditor or creditors to the forego¬ 
ing extent without the concurrence of the 
debtor, if he has clearly himself to 


be insolvent (or a notour bankrupt), the 
whole estates and effects of the debtor, 
real and personal, are legally taken for 
behoof of the creditors. The debtor’s estate 
is then made over to a trustee chosen 
by the creditors, the trustee being charged 
to bring the whole estate into the form of 
money, with certain precautions, and to 
receive, investigate, and reject or admit the 
claims of the creditors, subject to review 
of the Court of Session or sheriff court by 
summary petition. The debtor, and all 
who can give information as to the estate, 
must submit to public examination on oath 
before the sheriff of the county, and the 
debtor may thereafter, or by petition after 
six, twelve, or eighteen months from seques¬ 
tration, be discharged of all debts by the 
court with consent of the creditors or a 
number of them, or at the expiry of two 
years without consent. These proceedings 
may be partly superseded by ‘ composition ’ 
if such be assented to by a majority in 
number and nine-tenths in value of credi¬ 
tors, or by a majority in number and four- 
fifths in value of the creditors, according to 
the period at which such arrangement may 
be proposed. They may also be terminated 
by a deed of arrangement entered into 
between the bankrupt and a majority in 
number and four-fifths in value of his credi¬ 
tors, approved of by the court. Before a 
discharge is given there must be a report 
from the trustee as to the conduct of the 
bankrupt, whether he has complied with 
the provisions of the act, whether his bank¬ 
ruptcy is culpable or not, &c. Before the 
abolition of imprisonment for ordinary civil 
debts by act passed in 1880, an insolvent 
debtor often took advantage of a form of 
process by which, on making a complete 
cessio bonorum , or surrender to his creditors 
of all his property, he might obtain protec¬ 
tion from imprisonment. Though no person 
can now be imprisoned for ordinary debts, 
a creditor of a notour bankrupt may present 
a petition to the sheriff, praying him to 
decern that the debtor assign over all his 
goods for behoof of his creditors and that a 
trustee be appointed; and this proceeding 
is still designated a process of cessio bonorum. 
The act of 1880 also provides for the better 
punishment of fraudulent debtors in Scot¬ 
land. 

In Ireland there is a special code of 
bankruptcy contained in special acts, differ¬ 
ing to some extent from the regulations 
prevailing both in England and Scotland, 


BANKS-BANNS OF MATRIMONY. 


All bankruptcy business comes before the 
Court of Bankruptcy sitting in Dublin. Im¬ 
prisonment for debt was abolished in 1872. 

In the different British colonies the laws 
regulating bankruptcy naturally differ, and 
the same is the case with the individual 
states of the American Union, though 
Congress has the powder of legislating for 
the whole country in regard to this, and 
has oftener than once done so. 

Banks, Sir Joseph, Baronet, a distin¬ 
guished naturalist, born in London 1743. 
After studying at Harrow and Eton he 
went to Oxford in 1760, and formed there 
amongst his fellow-undergraduates a volun¬ 
tary class in botany, &c. He was chosen a 
member of the Royal Society in 1766, and 
soon after went to Newfoundland and Hud¬ 
son’s Bay to collect plants. In 1768, with 
Dr. Solander, a Swedish gentleman, pupil 
of Linnaeus, and then assistant librarian at 
the British Museum, he accompanied Cook’s 
expedition as naturalist. In 1772 he visited 
Iceland along with Dr. Solander, and during 
this voyage the Hebrides were examined, 
and the columnar formation of the rocks 
of Staffa first made known to naturalists. 
In 1777 Banks was chosen president of 
the Royal Society, in 1781 was made a 
baronet, and in 1795 received the order of 
the Bath. He wrote only essays, papers 
for learned societies, and short treatises. 
He died 1820, and bequeathed his collec¬ 
tions to the British Museum. 

Banks, Thomas, an English sculptor, born 
in 1735, died in 1805. He studied sculpture 
in the Royal Academy, and in Italy, where 
he executed several excellent pieces, parti¬ 
cularly a bass-relief representing Caractacus 
brought prisoner to Rome, and a Cupid 
catching a Butterfly, the latter work being 
afterwards purchased by the Empress Ca¬ 
tharine. On leaving Italy he spent two un¬ 
satisfactory years in Russia, and then re¬ 
turned to England, where he was soon after 
made an academician. Among his other 
works was a colossal statue of Achilles 
Mourning the Loss of Briseis in the hall of 
the British Institution, and the monument 
of Sir Eyre Coote in Westminster Abbey. 

Banks, Nathaniel Prentiss, U. S. 
General, born at Waltham, Mass., 1816. 
Learned the trade of a machinist, and be¬ 
came first a lecturer, then a local news¬ 
paper editor, studied law, then representa¬ 
tive in the Legislature, Governor of Mas¬ 
sachusetts, Speaker in the U. S. Congress 
J856-57 ? and General of Volunteers in 1862. 


Banksian Pine (Pinus banksidna), a 
North American species growing around 
Hudson’s Bay, about 25 feet high. 

Banks'ring. See Banxring. 

Bankura', a town of Bengal, on the Dhal- 
kisor river, healthy and with a considerable 
trade. Pop. 18,747. 

Bann, Upper and Lower, two rivers in 
the N. of Ireland, the former rising in the 
mountains of Mourne, county Down, and 
after flowing 38 miles in a N. direction, fall¬ 
ing into Lough Neagh, the latter being the 
outlet of Lough Neagh, and falling into the 
Atlantic Ocean 4 miles below Coleraine, 
after a course of nearly 40 miles. 

Ban'natyne Club, a literary society insti¬ 
tuted in Edinburgh (1823) by Sir-Walter 
Scott (its first president), David Laing 
(secretary till its dissolution in 1865), Ar¬ 
chibald Constable, and Thomas Thomson. 
It started with thirty-one members, sub¬ 
sequently extended to 100, having as its 
object the printing of rare w r orks on Scotch 
history, literature, geography, &c. It de¬ 
rived its name from George Bannatyne 
(1545-1609), the collector of the famous 
MS. of early Scottish poetry. 

Ban'ner, a piece of drapery, usually bear¬ 
ing some warlike or heraldic device or na¬ 
tional emblem, attached to the upper part 
of a pole or staff, and indicative of dignity, 
rank, or command. Heraldically it is a 
square or quadrangular flag which varies in 
size with the rank of its possessor; and it 
is sometimes used specifically to denote an 
ensign, the attached edge of which is main¬ 
tained in a horizontal position, as distin¬ 
guished from the flag, which is fastened 
vertically to an upright. 

Ban'neret, formerly, in England, a knight 
made on the field of battle as a reward for 
bravery, with the ceremony of cutting off 
the point of his pennon and making it a ban¬ 
ner. 

Ban'nock, a cake made of oatmeal, barley- 
meal, or peasemeal baked on an iron plate 
or griddle over the fire. From a supposed 
resemblance the turbot is sometimes called 
in Scotland the Bannock-fluke. 

Bannockburn, a village of Scotland, in 
Stirlingshire, 2 miles s.E. Stirling, famous 
for the decisive battle in which King Robert 
Bruce of Scotland defeated Edward II. of 
England, on the 24th June, 1314. It has 
manufactures of woollens, such as tartans, 
carpets, &c.; pop. 3374. 

Banns of Matrimony, public notice of 

the intenciecl celebration of a marriage given 



BANNU-BAOBAB. 


either by proclamation, viva voce , by a clergy¬ 
man, session-clerk, or precentor in some 
religious assembly, or by posting up written 
notice in some public place. 

Bannu, a district in the Punjab, Hin¬ 
dustan, on the north-western frontier; area, 
3868 miles; pop. 332,577, of whom nearly 
half are Afghans. 

Banquette (bang-ket'), in fortification, 
the elevation of earth behind a parapet, on 
which the garrison or defenders may stand. 
The height of th e parapet above the banquette 
is usually about 4 feet 6 inches; the breadth 
of the banquette from 2^ or 3 feet to 4 or 
6 feet according 
to the number of 
ranks to occupy 
it. It is fre¬ 
quently made 
double, that is, a 
second is made 
still lower. 

Bans. See 
Banns. 

Banshee', Ben- 
shi', a weird hag 
believed in Ire¬ 
land and some 
parts of Scotland 
to attach herself 
to a particular 
house, and to appear or make her presence 
known by wailing before the death of one 
of the family. 

Ban'tam, a residency occupying the whole 
of the w. end of the island of Java. It 
formed an independent kingdom, governed 
by its own sultan, till 1683, and the Dutch 
exercised suzerainty with brief intermission 
until its formal incorporation by them at 
the beginning of the present century. It 
produces rice, coffee, sugar, cinnamon, &c. 
Serang is its capital. The town Bantam 
was the first Dutch settlement in Java 
(1595), and for some time their principal 
mart, though now greatly decayed. 

Ban'tam Fowl, a small but spirited breed 
of domestic fowl, first brought from the 
East Indies, supposed to derive its name 
from Bantam in Java. Most of the sub- 
varieties have feathered legs; but these are 
not to be preferred. In point of colour the 
black and nankeen varieties take the palm. 
A well-bred bantam does not weigh more 
than a pound. 

Banteng' (Bos Banteng or Sondaicus), a 
wild species of ox, native of Java and Bor¬ 
neo, hqving a black body, slender white 


legs, short sleek hair, sharp muzzle, and the 
back humped behind the neck. 

Banting System, a course of diet for 
reducing superfluous fat, adopted and re¬ 
commended in 1863 by W. Banting of 
London. The dietary recommended was 
the use of butcher-meat principally, and 
abstinence from beer, farinaceous food, and 
vegetables. 

Ban'try, a small seaport town near the 
head of Bantry Bay, county Cork, Ireland. 
—The bay, one of three large inlets at the 
S.w. extremity of Ireland, affords an unsur¬ 
passed anchorage, and is about 25 miles long 

by 4 to 6 broad, 
and from 10 to 
40 fathoms deep, 
with no dangerous 
rocks or shoals. 

Bantu (ban-to'), 
the ethnological 
name of a group 
of African races 
below about 6° N. 
latitude, and in¬ 
cluding the Kaf¬ 
firs, Zulus, Bechu- 
anas, the tribes of 
the Loango, Con¬ 
go, &c., but not 
the Hottentots. 

Banu. See Bannu. 

Banx'ring (genus Tupaia), a quadruped 
belonging to the Insectivora, inhabiting the 
Indian Archipelago, bearing some resem¬ 
blance externally to a squirrel, but having a 
long pointed snout. They live among trees, 
which they ascend with great agility. 

Ban'yan, or Ban'ian (Ficus indica ), a 
tree of India, of the fig genus. The most 
peculiar feature of this tree is its method of 
throwing out from the horizontal branches, 
supports which take root as soon as they 
reach the ground, enlarge into trunks, and 
extending branches in their turn, soon cover 
a prodigious extent of ground. A celebrated 
banyan-tree has been known to shelter 7000 
men beneath its shade. The wood is soft 
and porous, ’and from its white glutinous 
juice bird-lime is sometimes prepared. 
Both juice and bark are regarded by the 
Hindoos as valuable medicines. 

Ba'obab ( Adansoniadigitata ), or Monkey- 
bread Tree, a tree belonging to the natural 
order (or sub-order) Bombaceae, and the 
only known species of its genus, which was 
named after the naturalist Adanson. It is one 
of the largest of trees, its trunk sometimes 

376 



Banyan Tree (Ficus indica). 









BAPHOMET 


BAPTISM. 



attaining a diameter of 30 feet; and as the 
profusion of leaves and drooping boughs 
sometimes almost hides the stem, the whole 
forms a hemispherical mass of verdure 140 
to 150 ft. in diameter and 60 to 70 ft. high. 
It is a native of Western Africa, and is 
found also in Abyssinia; it is cultivated in 
many of the warmer parts of the world. 
The roots are of extraordinary length, a 
tree 77 feet in girth having a tap-root 110 
feet in length. The leaves are deep green, 
divided into five unequal parts lanceolate 
in shape, and radiating from a common cen¬ 
tre. The flowers 
resemble the white 
poppy, having 
snowy petals and 
violet-colouredsta- 
mens; and the fruit, 
which is large and 
of an oblong shape, 
is said to taste 
like gingerbread, 
with a pleasant acid 
flavour. The wood 
is pale - coloured, 
light, and soft. 

The tree is liable 
to be attacked by 
a fungus which, 
vegetating in the 

woody part, renders it soft and pithlike. By 
the negroes of the west coast these trunks 
are hollowed into chambers, and dead bodies 
are suspended in them. There they become 
perfectly dry and well preserved, without 
further preparation or embalming. The 
baobab is emollient and mucilaginous; the 
pulverized leaves constitute lalo, which the 
natives mix with their daily food to dimi¬ 
nish excessive perspiration, and which is 
even used by Europeans in fevers and 
diarrhoeas. The expressed juice of the fruit 
is used as a cooling drink in putrid fevers, 
and also as a seasoning for various foods. 

Baph'omet, the imaginary idol or symbol 
which the Templars were accused of em¬ 
ploying in their mysterious rites, and of 
which little or nothing is known. 

Baptism (from the Greek baptizo , from 
bapto , to immerse or dip), a rite which is 
generally thought to have been usual with 
the Jews even before Christ, being ad¬ 
ministered to proselytes. From this bap¬ 
tism, however, that of St. John the Baptist 
differed, because he baptized Jews also as a 
symbol of the necessity of perfect purifica¬ 
tion from sin. Christ himself never baptized, 


but directed his disciples to administer this 
rite to converts (Mat. xxviii. 19); and bap¬ 
tism, therefore, became a religious ceremony 
among Christians, taking rank as a sacra¬ 
ment with all sects which acknowledge 
sacraments. In the primitive church the 
person to be baptized was dipped in a river 
or in a vessel, with the words which Christ 
had ordered, generally adopting a new name 
to further express the change. Sprinkling, 
or, as it was termed, clinic baptism, was 
used only in the case of the sick who could 
not leave their beds. The Greek Church 

and Eastern schis¬ 
matics retained 
the custom of im¬ 
mersion ; but the 
Western Church 
adopted or allowed 
the mode of bap¬ 
tism by pouring or 


Baobab Tree (Adansoniu digit at a). 


sprinkling, since 
continued by most 
Protestants. This 
practice can be 
traced back cer¬ 
tainly to the third 
century, before 
which its existence 
is disputed. Since 
the Reformation 
there have been various Protestant sects 
called Baptists, holding that baptism 
should be administered only by immersion, 
and to those who can make a personal 
profession of faith. The Montanists in 
Africa baptized even the dead, and in 
Roman Catholic countries the practice of 
baptizing church-bells—a custom of tenth- 
century origin — continues to this day. 
Being an initiatory rite, baptism is only 
administered once to the same person. The 
Roman and Greek Catholics consecrate the 
water of baptism, but Protestants do not. 
The act of baptism is accompanied only 
with the formula that the person is bap¬ 
tized in the name of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost; but, among most Christians, it 
is preceded by a confession of faith made 
by the person to be baptized if an adult, 
and by his parents or sponsors if he be a 
child. The Roman Catholic form of bap¬ 
tism is far more elaborate than the Pro¬ 
testant. This church teaches that all per¬ 
sons not baptized are damned, even unbap¬ 
tized infants are not admitted into heaven; 
but for those with whom the absence of 
baptisirj was the chief fault, even St. Augusp 








BAPTISTERY 


BAR. 


tine himself believed in a species of miti¬ 
gated damnation. Protestants hold that 
though the neglect of the sacrament is a sin, 
yet the saving new birth may be found 
without the performance of the rite which 
symbolizes it. Naming the person baptized 
forms no essential part of the ceremony, but 
has become almost universal, probably from 
the ancient custom of renaming the cate¬ 
chumen. 

Bap'tistery, a building or a portion of a 
building in which is administered the rite 
of baptism. In the early Christian Church 
the baptistery was distinct from the basilica 
or church, but was situated near its west 
end, and was generally circular or octagonal 
in form, and dome-roofed. About the end 
of the sixth century the baptistery began 
to be absorbed into the church, the font 
being placed within and not far from the 
western door. Some detached baptisteries 
still remain in use, as those of St. John 
Lateran, Rome, at Pisa, Parma, Ravenna, 
Florence, &c., that of Florence being 108 
feet in diameter externally, and richly de¬ 
corated. Baptisteries were dedicated to St. 
John the Baptist. 

Bap'tists, a Protestant sect, distinguished 
by their opinions respecting the mode and 
subjects of baptism. With regard to the 
mode, they maintain the necessity of im¬ 
mersion, and with regard to the subjects, 
they consider that baptism ought not to be 
administered to children at all, nor to adults 
in general, but to those only who profess 
repentance and faith. They are sometimes 
called Anti-padobaptists, to express their 
variance from those who defend infant bap¬ 
tism, and who are called Pcedobaptists. 
Apart from the special sect of that name 
Baptists are to be found equally among 
Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and 
Unitarians. The Baptists as a whole adopt 
the Independent or Congregational form of 
church government, and their ecclesiastical 
assemblies are held for the purpose of mu¬ 
tual stimulus and intercourse, and not for 
the general government of the body, or for 
interference with individual churches. The 
Particular Baptists of England (so called 
from believing that Christ died only for the 
elect), the Baptists of Scotland and Ireland, 
the Associated Baptists of America, and 
some of the Seventh-day Baptists, are Cal- 
vinistic. The other classes, such as the 
General Baptists (who believe that Christ 
died for all), are Arminian, or at least not 
(lalvjnistic, Most baptists profess to be 


Trinitarians. The Free-will Baptists, the 
Christian Society, and most of the General 
Baptists of England, admit of open com¬ 
munion: the other bodies decline commu¬ 
nion with any Christians but Baptists. The 
Associated or Calvinistic Baptists long 
ranked in the United States as the most 
numerous denomination of Christians, 
though they appear now to be outstripped 
by the Methodists, especially if the latter 
are considered as one great sect, and not 
rather as a mere aggregate of different sects. 
The Seventh-day Baptists, or Sabbatarians, 
observe the seventh day of the week. The 
Free-will Baptists profess the doctrine of free 
salvation. The Anabaptists of the Reforma¬ 
tion period are not to be confounded with 
the Baptists, by whom their principles were 
expressly disclaimed. The first regular 
Baptist church appears to have been formed 
in the reign of Elizabeth, but we may date 
their first public acknowledgment as dis¬ 
tinct from the Anabaptists from their peti¬ 
tion to Parliament in 1620. The year 1633 
provides the earliest record of the formation 
of a Particular Baptist church in London. 
In 1689 a Baptist General Assembly, held 
in London, formulated a confession of thirty - 
two articles and a catechism. The Baptist 
Union formed in 1832 comprehends the 
greater number of members of the sect in 
Great Britain and Ireland. The total num¬ 
ber of members of Baptist churches in the 
United Kingdom is not much more than 
300,000. There are nine colleges for train¬ 
ing ministers, of which the chief are: Bristol 
Baptist College; Regent’s Park; Rawdon, 
Bradford; and the Metropolitan Pastors’ 
College. The Regular Baptists in the 
United States number over 2,700,000 mem¬ 
bers, in addition to which there are Anti¬ 
mission Baptists, Free-Avill Baptists, and 
Seventh-day Baptists. In Canada there 
are in all about 300,000 Baptists. 

Bar, in law, the railing that incloses the 
place which counsel occupy in courts of jus¬ 
tice; hence the phrase, at the bar of the court , 
that is, in open court. Hence also persons 
duly admitted as pleaders or advocates be¬ 
fore the courts of England are denominated 
barristers (see Barrister), and the whole 
body of such barristers or advocates are 
called the bar. The inclosed place or dock 
in which persons accused of crimes stand in 
court is also called the bar. Near the door 
of both houses of Parliament there is also 
a bar, beyond which none but the members 
apcl clerks are admitted, and at which cquu- 

378 



BARBARY. 


BAR 


eel, witnesses, offenders against privilege, 
&c., are heard. 

Bar, in music, is a line drawn through the 
stave to mark the rhythm of small portions; 
the notes composing these are also called a 
bar. 

Bar, in heraldry, an ordinary resembling 
the fesse, stretching like it horizontally 
across the shield but narrower. 

Bar'aba, the name of a great steppe in 
the West Siberian governments of Tomsk, 
Akmolinsk, and Tobolsk. 

Barabin'zians, a rude, uncultivated tribe 
of Tartars, living on the banks of the river 
Irtish, and subsisting chiefly on the produce 
of their herds and on fish supplied by the 
lakes of the Baraba steppe. 

Baraguey-d’hilliers (ba-ra-ga-del-ya), 
Louis, a distinguished French general under 
the first empire, born in Paris 1764. After 
serving under Custine and other generals 
he joined the army of Italy, and took Ber¬ 
gamo and Venice, of which he became 
governor. He took part in the expedition 
to Egypt, served in the campaigns in Ger¬ 
many and Spain, and commanded a division 
of the great army in the Russian campaign of 
1812. He was intrusted with the direction 
of the vanguard in the retreat, but was 
compelled to capitulate. Napoleon ordered 
him to return to France as under arrest, but, 
overcome with grief and fatigue, he died 
at Berlin on the way, Dec. 1812. 

Barb, a horse of the Barbary breed, in¬ 
troduced by the Moors into Spain, and of 
great speed, endurance, and docility. 

Bar'bacan, Barbican, generally an ad¬ 
vanced work defending the entrance to a 
castle or fortified town, as before the gate 
or drawbridge, and often of formidable size 
and strength. 

Barba'does, or Barbados, the most eastern 
of the West India Islands, first mentioned 
in 1518, and occupied by the British in 1625. 
Length 21 miles, breadth 13; area, 106,470 
acres or 166 sq. miles; mostly under culti¬ 
vation. It is divided into eleven Church of 
England parishes; capital, Bridgetown. It 
is more densely peopled than almost any spot 
in the world, the population in 1891 being 
172,000, or about 1036 to the square mile. 
The climate is very hot, though moderated 
by the constant trade-winds; and the island 
is subject to dreadful hurricanes. ( The sur¬ 
face is broken, now without forests, and with 
few streams; the highest point is 1145 feet 
above the sea-level. There are few indi¬ 
genous mammals or birds. The black low. 
* 


land soil gives great returns of sugar in 
favourable seasons. The chief exports, be¬ 
sides sugar, are molasses and rum; imports: 
rice, salt meat, corn, butter, flour, &c. The 
exports are usually over £1,000,000 in value. 
Barbadoes has a considerable transit trade, 
being in some measure the central mart for 
all the Windward Islands. It is the see of 
a bishop and the head-quarters of the Bri¬ 
tish forces in the West Indies. There is a 
railway across the island, also tramways, 
telephones, &c. The island forms a distinct 
government under a governor, an executive 
and a legislative council, and a house of 
assembly. Liberal provision is made for 
education both by old foundations and by 
annual vote. 

Barbadoes Cherry, the pleasant tart, 
fleshy fruit of Malpiyhia urens, a West 
Indian tree 15 ft. high. 

Barbadoes Gooseberry, the fruit of Peres - 
kia aculeata, a W. Indian species of Cactus. 

Barbadoes Leg, a form of elephantiasis. 

Bar'bara, St., according to the legend 
belonged to Nicomedia, in Asia Minor, and 
was beheaded by her father for having 
turned Christian, he being immediately 
thereafter struck dead by lightning. She 
is invoked in storms, and is considered the 
patron saint of artillerists. 

Barbarelli. See Giorgione. 

Barbarian (Greek, barbciros), a name 
given by the Greeks, and afterwards by the 
Romans, to every one who spoke an unin¬ 
telligible language; and hence coming to 
connote the idea of rude, illiterate, un¬ 
civilized. This word, therefore, did not 
always convey the idea of something odious 
or savage; thus Plautus calls Nsevius a bar¬ 
barous poet, because he had not written in 
Greek; and Cicero terms illiterate persons 
without taste ‘ barbarians.’ 

Barbarossa (Italian, ‘red-beard’), a sur¬ 
name given to Frederick I. of Germany. 

Barbarossa (‘red-beard’), the name of two 
famous Turkish corsairs of the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, who ravaged the shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean, and established themselves in 
Algiers. The elder of the brothers, Aruch 
or Horuk, was killed in 1518; the younger 
and more notorious, Hayraddin, who cap¬ 
tured Tunis, died in 1546. 

Bar'bary, a general name for the most 
northerly portion of Africa, extending 
about 2600 miles from Egypt to the Atlan¬ 
tic, with a breadth varying from about 140 
to 550 miles; comprising Marocco, Fez, 
Algeria, Tutus, and Tripoli (including Barca 



BARBARY APE-BARBERRY. 


and Fezzan). The principal races are: the 
Berbers, the original inhabitants, from 
whom the country takes its name; the 
Arabs, who conquered an extensive portion 
of it during the times of the caliphs; the 
Bedouins, Jews, Turks, and the French 
colonists of Algeria, &c. The country, 
which was prosperous under the Cartha¬ 
ginians, was, next to Egypt, the richest of 
the Roman provinces, and the Italian states 
enriched themselves by their intercourse 
with it. In the fifteenth century, however, 
it became infested with adventurers who 
made the name of Barbary corsair a terror 
to commerce, a condition of things finally re¬ 
moved by the French occupation of Algeria. 

Barbary Ape ( Intius ecaudatus), a species 
of ape, or tailless monkey, with greenish- 
brown hair, of the size of a large cat, re¬ 
markable for docility, also called the magot. 
It is common in Barbary and other parts 
of Africa, and some used to live formerly 
on Gibraltar Rock, being the only European 
monkey, though probably not indigenous. 
It has been the ‘ showman’s ape’ from time 
immemorial. 

Bar'bastel, Bakbastelle, a bat with 
hairy lips ( Barbastellus communis ), a native 
of England. 

Barbas'tro, a city, Spain, Arragon, pro¬ 
vince of Huesca, with an interesting cathe¬ 
dral, and some trade and manufactures. 
Pop. 8164. 

Bar'bauld, Anna Letitia, English poet 
and general writer, was born in Leicestershire 
1743, daughter of a Presbyterian minister 
named Aikin. She published a small volume 
of miscellaneous poems in 1772, and in 1773, 
in conjunction with her brother, Dr. John 
Aikin, a collection of pieces in prose. In 
1774 she married the Rev. Rochemont 
Barbauld. Her Early Lessons and Hymns 
for Children, and various essays and poems, 
won considerable popularity. She edited 
a collection of English novels, with critical 
and biographical notices; a selection from 
the British essayists of the reign of Anne, 
and another from Richardson’s correspon¬ 
dence. Her last long poem, Eighteen 
Hundred and Eleven, appeared in 1812. 
She died at Stoke-Newington, 1825. 

Bar'becue, a word of West Indian origin, 
meaning a hog, or other large animal, 
roasted whole. 

Barbel (Barbus), a genus of fresh-water 
fishes of the carp family, distinguished by 
the four fleshy filaments growing from the 
Bps, two at the pose and one at each corner 


of the mouth, forming the kind of beard to 
which the genus owes its name. Of the 
several species the European Barbus vul¬ 
garis, common in most rivers, has an 
average length of from 12 to 18 inches, and 



Barbel (Barbus vulgaris). 


in form and habits strongly resembles the 
pike. Its body is elongated and rounded, 
olive-coloured above and bluish on the sides, 
and covered with small scales. The upper 
jaw, which is much longer than the lower, 
forms a snout, with which it bores into the 
mud for worms, insects, aquatic plants, &c. 
It weighs from 9 to 20 pounds. It gives 
good sport to the angler; but its flesh is very 
coarse, and at the time of spawning the roe 
is dangerous to eat. 

Barber, one whose occupation is to shave 
or trim the beard, or to cut and dress hair. 
The practice of surgery was formerly a part 
of the craft, and by an act of Henry VIII. 
the Company of Barbers was incorporated 
with the Company of Surgeons—the com¬ 
pany being then known as the Barber- 
surgeons—with the limitation, however, 
that the surgeons w T ere not to shave or 
practise ‘ barbery,’ and the barbers were to 
perform no higher surgical operation than 
blood-letting and tooth-drawing. This con¬ 
tinued till the time of George II. The 
signs of the old profession—the pole which 
the patient grasped, its spiral decoration in 
imitation of the bandage, and the basin to 
catch the blood—are still sometimes re¬ 
tained. The barbers’ shops, always notori¬ 
ous for gossip, were in some measure the 
news-centres of classic and mediaeval times. 

Barberini (bar-be-re'ne), a celebrated 
Florentine family, which, since the pontifi¬ 
cate of Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII., 
1623 to 1644), has occupied a distinguished 
place among the nobility of Rome. During 
his reign he seemed chiefly intent on the 
aggrandizement of his three nephews, of 
whom two were appointed cardinals, and 
the third Prince of Palestrina. 

Bar'berry, a genus of shrubs, order Ber- 
beridaceas, the common barberry ( Berberis 
vulgaris) having bunches of small beautiful 

380 







BARBERTON - 

red berries, somewhat oval; serrated and- 
pointed leaves; thorns, Three together, 
upon the branches; and hanging clusters of 
yellow flowers. The berries nearly ap¬ 
proach the tamarind in respect of acidity, 
and when boiled with sugar make an 
agreeable preserve, rob, or jelly. They are 
also used as a dry sweetmeat, and in sugar¬ 
plums or comfits; are pickled with vinegar, 
and are used for the garnishing of dishes. 
The bark is said to have medicinal proper¬ 
ties, and the inner bark and roots with 
alum yield a fine yellow dye. The shrub 
was originally a native of eastern countries, 
but is now generally diffused in Europe, 
as also in North America. In England it 
has been almost universally banished from 
hedgerows, from the belief that it causes rust 
on corn—a supposition supported by the 
fact that it is subject itself to attacks of a 
sort of epiphyte. Numerous other species 
belong to Asia and America. 

Bar'berton, the chief mining centre of De 
Kaap gold fields, Transvaal, about 80 miles 
from Lydenburg, and 150 to 160 from 
Delagoa Bay. Pop. about 4000. 

Bar'bets ( Bucconidce ), a family of climb¬ 
ing birds with a thick conical beak, having 
tufts of bristles at its base. Their wings 
are short and their flight somewhat heavy. 
They have been divided into three sub¬ 
genera:—The barbicans (Pogonias ), inhabit¬ 
ing India and Africa, and feeding chiefly 
on fruit; the barbets proper (Bucco), found 
in Africa and America, and nearly related 
to the woodpeckers; and the puff-birds 
( Tamatia), inhabiting America, and feeding 
on insects. 

Barbette (bar-bet'), an elevation of earth 
behind the breastwork of a fortification, from 
which the artillery may be fired over the par¬ 
apet instead of through an embrasure. A 
barbette carriage is a carriage which elevates 
a gun sufficiently high to permit its being 
fired over the parapet. 

Barbeyrac (bar-ba-rak), Jean, an able 
writer on jurisprudence and natural law, 
translator of Grotius and Cumberland, and 
translator and annotator of Puffendorf. 
Born 1674; professor of law at Lausanne 
and Groningen; died 1744. 

Barbican. See Barbacan. 

Barbie du Bocage (barb-ya dli bo-kazh), 
Jean Denis, a distinguished geographer, 
born in Paris in 1760, who laid the founda¬ 
tion of his fame in 1788 by his Atlas to 
Barthelemy’s Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis. 
His maps and plans to the works of Thucy¬ 

381 


— BARBUDA. 

dides, Xenophon, &c., exhibit much erudi¬ 
tion, and materially advanced the science 
of ancient geography. He also prepared 
many modern maps, and published various 
excellent dissertations. He held many 
honourable posts, and died in 1825. 

Barbier (barb-ya), Antoine Alexandre, 
bibliographer (1765-1825). He was ap¬ 
pointed keeper of the library of the Conseil 
d’etat in 1798; Napoleon made him his 
librarian in 1807; and he was afterwards 
librarian to Louis XVIII. His Catalogue 
de la Bibliotheque du Conseil d’Etat 
(1801-3), and a Dictionnaire des Ouvrages 
Anonymes et Pseudonymes (1806-9), are 
both valuable works. 

Barbieri (bar-be-a're), Giovanni Fran¬ 
cesco, otherwise known as Guercino (the 
squinter) da Cento , an eminent and prolific 
historical painter, born near Bologna 1590, 
died in 1666. His style showed the influ¬ 
ence of Caravaggio and of the Caracci, his 
best work being of the latter school. Chief 
work, a St. Petronilla in the Capitol at 
Rome: but most of the large galleries have 
pictures by him. —Paolo Antonio Bar¬ 
bieri, a celebrated still-life and animal 
painter, was a brother of Guercino; born 
1596, died 1640. 

Bar'bour, John, an ancient Scottish poet, 
contemporary with Chaucer, born about 
1316. By 1357 he was archdeacon of 
Aberdeen, and in the following year was 
appointed a commissioner to treat for the 
ransom of David II. He appears as auditor 
of the exchequer oftener than once, as trav¬ 
elling through England on several occasions, 
and was pensioned by Robert II. His chief 
poem, The Bruce, written about 1375, was 
first published in 1571, and a MS. exists in 
the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, dated 
1489. Of another long poem, setting forth 
the Trojan origin of the Scottish kings, no 
MS. remains, unless a portion of two Troy 
books in the Cambridge and Bodleian libra¬ 
ries may be ascribed to Barbour. He has 
also been credited, probably without sufficient 
grounds, with having compiled a Book of 
Legends of Saints, existing in a single MS. 
at Cambridge, and published only in recent 
times. He died in 1395. He was the father 
of Scottish poetry and history, and his Bruce 
is linguistically of high value. Though 
wanting in the higher qualities of poetry, it 
is truthful and natural, and often exhibits a 
high moral dignity. 

Barbuda (bar-bo'da), one of the West 
Indies, annexed by Britain ^1628; about 



BARBY-BARCLAY. 


15 miles long and 8 wide; lying north of 
Antigua; pop. 800. It is flat, fertile, and 
healthy. Corn, cotton, pepper, and tobacco 
'are the principal produce, but the island is 
only partially cleared for cultivation. There 
is no harbour, but a well-sheltered road¬ 
stead on the w. side. It is a dependency 
of Antigua. 

Barby (bar'be), a German town on the 
Elbe, in the government of Madgeburg, 
with an old castle. Pop. 5540. 

Bar'ca, a division of N. Africa, between 
the Gulf of Sidra and Egypt, a vilayet of the 
Turkish Empire, capital Bengazi. It formed 
a portion of the ancient Cyrenaica, and from 
the time of the Ptolemies was known as 
Pentapolis from its five Greek cities. The 
country forms mostly a rocky plateau. A 
large portion of it is desert, but some parts, 
especially near the coast, are fertile, and 
yield abundant crops and excellent pasture, 
the chief being wheat, barley, dates, figs, 
and olives. Flowering shrubs, roses, honey¬ 
suckles, &c., occur in great variety. There 
are hardly any permanent streams, but the 
eastern portion is tolerably well watered by 
rains and springs. The exports are grain 
and cattle, with ostrich feathers and ivory 
from the interior. Next to Bengazi the 
seaport of Derna is the chief town. The 
pop. probably does not exceed 300,000. 

Barcarolle (-rol'), a species of song sung 
by the barcaruoli, or gondoliers of Venice, 
and hence applied to a song or melody com¬ 
posed in imitation. 

Barcellona (bar-chel-o'na), seaport, Sicily, 
province of Messina, immediately contigu¬ 
ous upon Pozzo di Gotto, and practically 
forming one town with it. Joint pop. 
14,471. 

Barcelona (bar-thel-o'na), one of the 
largest cities of Spain, chief town of the 
province of Barcelona, and formerly capital 
of the kingdom of Catalonia; finely situated 
on the northern portion of the Spanish 
Mediterranean coast. It is divided into 
the upper and lower town; the former 
modern, regular, stone-built, and often of 
an English architectural type, the latter 
old, irregular, brick-built, and with traces 
of Eastern influence in the architecture. 
The harbour, though spacious, does not 
admit vessels of more than 12 ft. draught. 
The principal manufactures are cottons, 
silks, woollens, machinery, paper, glass, 
chemicals, stoneware, soap; exports manu¬ 
factured goods, wine and brandy, fruit, oil, 
&c.; imports coals, textile fabrics, machinery, 


•cotton, fish, hides, silks, timber, &c. The 
city contains a university, several public 
libraries, a museum, a large arsenal, cannon 
foundry, &c. Barcelona was, until the 
twelfth century, governed by its own counts, 
but was afterwards united with Arragon. 
In 1640, with the rest of Catalonia, it 
placed itself under the French crown; in 
1652 it submitted again to the Spanish gov¬ 
ernment; in 1697 it was taken by the French, 
but was restored to Spain at the Peace of 
Ryswick. It has had several severe visita¬ 
tions of cholera and yellow fever, and has 
been the scene of many serious and san¬ 
guinary revolts, as in 1836,1840, and 1841. 
Pop. 272,481 in 1887. The province has 
an area of 2985 sq. m.; pop. 899,264. It is 
generally mountainous, but well cultivated, 
and among the most thickly peopled in 
Spain. 

Barcelona, town of Venezuela, near the 
mouth of the Neveri, which is navigable for 
vessels of small size, but larger vessels 
anchor off the mouth of the river. Pop. 
11,424. 

Barcelona Nuts, hazel-nuts exported from 
the Barcelona district of Spain. 

Bar'clay, Alexander, a poet of the six¬ 
teenth century, most probably a native of 
Scotland, born about 1475, for some years 
a priest and chaplain of St. Mary Ottery, 
in Devonshire, afterwards a Benedictine 
monk of Ely, subsequently a Franciscan, 
and latterly the holder of one or two livings* 
died 1552. His principal work was a satire, 
entitled The Shyp of Folys of this Worlde, 
part translation and part imitation of 
Brandt’s Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), and 
printed by Pynson in 1509. He also wrote 
a Myrrour of Good Maners, and some Eg- 
loges (Eclogues), both printed by Pynson, as 
well as translations, &c. 

Barclay, John, poet and satirist, son of a 
Scotch father, born at Pont-a-Mousson (Lor¬ 
raine), in 1582, and probably educated in 
the Jesuits’ College there. Having settled 
in England he published a Latin politico- 
satirical romance, entitled Euphormionis Sa- 
tyricon, having as its object the exposure 
of the Jesuits. In 1616 he left England 
for Rome, received a pension from Pope 
Paul V., and died in 1621. His chief work 
is a singular romance in Latin, entitled Ar- 
genis (Paris, 1621), thought by some to be 
an allegory bearing on the political state of 
Europe at the period. It has been translated 
into several modern lanauao'es. 

© o 

Barclay, Robert, the celebrated apolo* 

382 



BARDESAtfES. 


BARCLAY DE TOLLY 


gist of the Quakers, born in 1648, at Gor- 
donstown, Moray, and educated at Paris, 
where he became a Roman Catholic. Re¬ 
called home by his father, he followed the 
example of the latter and became a Quaker. 
His first treatise in support of his adopted 
principles, published at Aberdeen in the 
year 1670, under the title of Truth Cleared 
of Calumnies, together with his subsequent 
writings, did much to rectify public senti¬ 
ment in regard to the Quakers. His chief 
work, in Latin, An Apology for the True 
Christian Divinity, as the same is Preached 
and held forth by the People called, in 
scorn, Quakers, was soon reprinted at Am¬ 
sterdam, and quickly translated into Ger¬ 
man, Dutch, French, and Spanish, and, by 
the author himself, into English. His fame 
was now widely diffused; and, in his travels 
with William Penn and George Fox through 
England, Holland, and Germany, to spread 
the opinions of the Quakers, he was received 
everywhere with the highest respect. The 
last of his productions, On the Possibility 
and Necessity of an Inward and Imme¬ 
diate Revelation, was not published in Eng¬ 
land until 1686; from which time Barclay 
lived quietly with his family. He died, 
after a short illness, at his own house of 
Ury, Kincardineshire, in 1690. He was a 
friend of and had influence with James II. 

Barclay de Tolly, Michael, Prince, a 
distinguished general and field-marshal of 
Russia, born in 1755. His family, of 
Scottish origin, had been established in 
Livonia since 1689. He entered the army 
at twelve years of age, served in various 
campaigns against the Turks, Swedes, and 
Poles, and in 1811 was named minister of 
war. On the invasion of Napoleon he was 
transferred to the chief command of the army, 
and adopted a plan of retreat; his forces 
did not greatly exceed 100,000 men, but the 
court became impatient, and after the cap¬ 
ture of Smolensk by the French he was 
superseded by Kutusoff. Sinking all per¬ 
sonal feeling, he asked leave to serve under 
his successor, commanded the right wing at 
the battle of the Moskwa, maintained his 
position, and covered the retreat of the rest 
of the army. After the battle of Bautzen, 
in 1813, he was reappointed to the chief 
command, which he had soon after to resign 
to Prince Schwarzenberg. He forced the 
surrender of General Vandamme after the 
battle of Dresden, took part in the decisive 
battle of Leipzig, and was made a field- 
marshal in Paris. In 1815 he received 

383 


from the emperor the title of prince, and 
from Louis XVIII. the badge of the order 
of Military Merit. He died in 1818. 

Bar-cochba (bar-koVba), Simon, a Jew¬ 
ish impostor, who pretended to be the Mes¬ 
siah, raised a revolt, and made himself mas¬ 
ter of Jerusalem about 132 a.d., and of about 
fifty fortified places. Hadrian sent to Bri¬ 
tain for Julius Severus, one of his ablest 
generals, who gradually regained the differ¬ 
ent forts and then took and destroyed Jerusa¬ 
lem. Bar-cochba retired to a mountain for¬ 
tress, and perished in the assault of it by 
the Romans three years after, about 135. 

Bar'coo. See Cooper s Creek. 

Bard, one of an order among the ancient 
Celtic tribes, whose occupation was to com¬ 
pose and sing verses in honour of the heroic 
achievements of princes and brave men, 
generally to the accompaniment of the harp. 
Their verses also frequently embodied reli¬ 
gious or ethical precepts, genealogies, laws, 
&c. Their existence and function was 
known to the Romans two centuries B.c.; 
but of the Gallic bards only the tradition of 
their popularity survives. The first Welsh 
bards of whom anything is extant are Ta¬ 
liesin, Aneurin, and Llyvvarch, of the sixth 
century. A considerable lacuna then occurs 
in their history until the order was reconsti¬ 
tuted in the tenth century by King Howel 
Dha, and again in the eleventh by Gryffith 
ap Conan. Edward I. is said to have hanged 
all the Welsh bards as promoters of sedi¬ 
tion. Some attempts have been made in 
Wales for the revival of bardism, and the 
Cambrian Society was formed in 1818, for 
this purpose and for the preservation of the 
remains of the ancient literature. The re¬ 
vived Eisteddfodan, or bardic festivals, have 
been so far exceedingly popular. In Ireland 
there were three classes of bards: those who 
sang of war, religion, &c., those who chanted 
the laws, and those who gave genealogies 
and family histories in verse. They were 
famous harpists. In the Highlands of Scot¬ 
land there are considerable remains of com¬ 
positions supposed to be those of their old 
bards still preserved. 

Bardesa'nes, a Syrian Gnostic, who lived 
in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, in Edessa, 
and whose system started with the state¬ 
ment that from the union of God with mat¬ 
ter sprang Christ and a female Holy Ghost, 
from whom in turn sprang various existen¬ 
ces. He propagated his doctrines in Syrian 
hymns, the first in the language. His son, 
Harmonius, was also an able hymn-writer. 



BARDWAN- 

The Bardesanists maintained themselves till 
the fifth century. 

Bardwan', or Burdwan', a division of 
Bengal, upon the Hugli, comprising the six 
districts of Bardwan, Hugli, Howrah, Mid- 
napur, Bankura, and Birbhum. Area, 13,855 
sq. miles; pop. 7,393,954.— The district 
Bardwan has an area of 2697 sq. miles, and 
a pop. of 1,391,823. Apart from its products, 
rice, grain, hemp, cotton, indigo, &c., it has 
a noted coal-field of about 500 sq. miles in 
area, with an annual output of about half a 
million tons.—The town of Bardwan has a fine 
palaceof the Maharajah and a pop. of 34,080. 

Barebone, or Barbone, Praise-God, the 
name of a leather seller in Fleet Street, 
London, who obtained a kind of lead in the 
convention which Cromwell substituted for 
the Long Parliament, and which was thence 
nicknamed the Barebone Parliament. After 
its dissolution he disappears till 1660, when 
he presented a petition to Parliament against 
the restoration of the monarchy. In 1661 
he was committed to the Tower for some 
time, but his subsequent history is unknown. 

Barefooted Friars, monks who use san¬ 
dals, or go barefoot. They are not a dis¬ 
tinct body, but may be found in several 
orders of mendicant friars—for example, 
among the Carmelites, Franciscans, Augus¬ 
tins. There were also barefooted nuns. 

Barege (ba-razh'), a light, open tissue of 
silk and worsted or cotton and worsted for 
women’s dresses, originally manufactured 
near Bareges. 

Bareges (ba-razh), a watering-place, s. of 
France, dep. Hautes-Pyrentes, about 4000 
feet above the sea, celebrated for its thermal 
springs, which are frequented for rheuma¬ 
tism, scrofula, &c. The place is hardly in¬ 
habited except in the bathing season, June 
till September. 

Baregine (ba-razh'in; from Bareges), a 
gelatinous product of certain algae growing 
in sulphuric mineral springs, and imparting 
to them the colour and odour of flesh-broth. 

Bareilly (ba-ra'li), a town of Hindustan 
in the N.W. Provinces, capital of a district 
of same name, on a pleasant and elevated 
site. It has a fort and cantonments, a gov¬ 
ernment college, and manufactures sword- 
cutlery, gold and silver lace, perfumery, 
furniture and upholstery. On the outbreak 
of the Indian mutiny the native garrison 
took possession of the place, but it was 
retaken by Lord Clyde in May, 1858. Pop. 
103,160. The district has an area of 1614 
sq. miles; pop. 1,030,936. 


BARGE-BOARD. 

Bar'ents, William, a Dutch navigator of 
the end of the sixteenth century, who, on an 
expedition intended to reach China by the 
north-east passage, discovered Nova Zembla. 
He wintered there in 1596-97, and died be¬ 
fore reaching home. 

Baret'ti, Joseph, an Italian writer, born 
at Turin, 1716. In 1748 he came to Eng¬ 
land, and in 1753 published in English a 
Defence of the Poetry of Italy against the 
Censures of M. Voltaire. In 1760 he 
brought out a useful Italian and English 
Dictionary. After an absence of six years, 
during part of which he edited the Frusta 
Letteraria (Literary Scourge) at Venice, he 
returned to England, and in 1768 published 
an Account of the Manners and Customs of 
Italy. Not long after, in defending himself 
in a street brawl, he stabbed his assailant 
and was tried for murder at the Old Bailey, 
but acquitted; Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, 
Garrick, Reynolds, and Beauclerk giving 
testimony to his good character. An Eng¬ 
lish and Spanish Dictionary, and various 
other works, followed before his death in 17 89. 

Barfleur (bar-fteur), at one time the best 
port on the cost of Normandy, and the re¬ 
puted port from which William the Conque¬ 
ror sailed. It was destroyed in the year 
1346 by Edward III. Present pop. 1304. 

Barfrush', Barfurush'. Same as Bal- 
froosh. 

Bargain and Sale, a legal term denoting 
the contract by which lands, tenements, &c., 
are transferred from one person to another. 

Barge, a term similar in origin to barque, 
but generally used of a flat-bottomed boat 



Barge-board of 15th century, Ockwells, Berkshire. 

of some kind, whether used for loading and 
unloading vessels, or as a canal-boat, or as 
an ornamental boat of state or pleasure. 
Barge-board (perhaps a corruption of 
384 














BARHAM 


BARK. 


verge-board), in architecture, a board gene¬ 
rally pendent from the eaves of gables, so 
as to conceal the rafters, keep out rain, 
&c. They are sometimes elaborately orna¬ 
mented. The portion of the roof projecting 
from the wall at the gable-end, and beneath 
which the barge-board runs, is termed the 
barge-course. 

Barham (bar'am), Rev. Richard Harris, 
a humorous writer, born in 1788 at Canter¬ 
bury ; educated at Paul’s School, London, and 
at Brasenose, Oxford; appointed in succession 
curate of Ashford, curate of West well, rec¬ 
tor of Snargate, in Romney Marsh, and one 
of the minor canons of St. Paul’s Cathedral. 
He published an unsuccessful novel, Bald¬ 
win, wrote neai’ly a third of the articles in 
Gorton’s Biographical Dictionary, and con¬ 
tributed to Blackwood’s Magazine. In 1824 
he was appointed priest in ordinary of the 
chapel-royal, and afterwards rector of St. 
Mary Magdalene and St. Gregory-by-St.- 
Paul, London. In 1837, on the starting of 
Bentley’s Miscellany, he laid the main foun¬ 
dation of his literary fame by the publica¬ 
tion in that periodical of the Ingoldsby Le¬ 
gends. He died in 1845. 

Barhebrae'us. See Abulfaragius. 

Bari (ba're; anc. Barium), a seaport, S. 
Italy, on a small promontory of the Adria¬ 
tic, capital of the province Terra di Bari. 
It was a place of importance as early as the 
third century B.c., and has been thrice de¬ 
stroyed and rebuilt. The present town, 
though poorly built for the most part, has a 
large Norman castle, a fine cathedral and 
priory, &c. It manufactures cotton and 
linen goods, hats, soap, glass, and liqueurs; 
has a trade in wine, grain, almonds, oil, &c., 
and is now an important seaport. Pop. 
about 70,000. The province has an area of 
2280 sq. miles, and is fertile in fruit, wine, 
oil, &c.; pop. 679,000. 

Bari, a negro people of Africa, dwelling 
on both sides of the White Nile, and having 
Gondokoro as their chief town. They prac¬ 
tise agriculture and cattle-rearing. Their 
country was conquered by Baker for Egypt. 

Baril'la, the commercial name for the 
impure carbonate and sulphate of soda im¬ 
ported from Spain and the Levant. It is 
the Spanish name of a plant ( Salsola Soda), 
from the ashes of which and from those of 
others of the same genus the crude alkali is 
obtained. On the shores of the Mediterra¬ 
nean the seeds of the plants from which it 
is obtained are regularly sown near the sea, 
and these, when at a sufficient state of ma- 
VOL. I. 385 


turity, are pulled up, dried, and burned in 
bundles in ovens or in trenches. The ashes, 
while hot, are continually stirred with long 
poles, and the saline matter they contain 
forms, when cold, a solid mass, almost as 
hai’d as stone. To obtain the carbonate of 
soda it is only requisite to lixiviate the ba¬ 
rilla in boiling water, and evaporate the sol¬ 
ution. British barilla or kelp is a still more 
impure alkali obtained from burning sea¬ 
weeds. Soda is now obtained for the most 
part from common salt. 

Baring-Gould (ba-ring-gold'), Sabine, 
English clergyman and ,author, born at 
Exeter 1834. Educated at Cambridge, he 
has held several livings in the English 
Church, being now rector of Lew Trenchard, 
Devon. He has written with success on 
theological and miscellaneous subjects, and 
has latterly distinguished himself as a 
novelist. Among his works are: Iceland, 
its Scenes and Sagas; Curious Myths of the 
Middle Ages; The Origin and Develop¬ 
ment of Religious Belief; Lives of the 
Saints (in 15 vols.); Village Sermons; The 
Vicar of Morwenstowe (an account of the 
Rev. R. S. Hawker); The Mystery of Suf¬ 
fering; &c.; besides the novels (unacknow¬ 
ledged) Mehalah, John Herring, Richard 
Cable, The Gaverocks, &c.; and short stories 
or novelettes. 

Baringo, a lake in Africa, n.e. of the 
Victoria Nyanza, about 20 miles long. 

Baritone, or Bar'ytone, a male voice, 
the compass of which partakes of those of 
the common bass and the tenor, but does 
not extend so far downwards as the one, nor 
to an equal height with the other. Its best 
tones are from the lower A of the bass clef 
to the lower F in the treble. 

Ba'rium, the metallic basis of baryta, 
which is an oxide of barium; specific gra¬ 
vity 4; symbol Ba. It is only found in 
compounds, such as the common sulphate 
and carbonate, and was isolated by Davy 
for the first time in 1808. It is a yellow, 
malleable metal, which readily oxidizes, 
decomposes water, and fuses at a low tem¬ 
perature. Its nitrate and chlorate are used 
in pyrotechny. 

Bark, the exterior covering of the stems 
of exogenous plants. It is composed of cel¬ 
lular and vascular tissue, is separable from 
the wood, and is often regarded as consist¬ 
ing of four layers: 1st, the epidermis or 
cuticle, which, however, is scarcely regarded 
as a part of the true bark ; 2d, the epi - 
phlceum or outer cellular layer of the tru« 

25 


BARK 


BARLOW. 


bark or cortex; 3d, the mesophlceum or 
middle layer, also cellular; 4th, an inner 
vascular layer, the liber or endophlceum, 
commonly called bad. Endogenous plants 
have no true bark. Bark contains many 
valuable products, as gum, tannin, &c.; cork 
is a highly useful substance obtained from 
the epiphlceum; and the strength and flexi¬ 
bility of bast makes it of considerable value. 
Bark used for tanning is obtained from oak, 
hemlock-spruce, species of acacia growing in 
Australia, &c. Angostura bark, Peruvian 
or cinchona bark, cinnamon, cascai’illa, &c., 
are useful barks. 

Bark. See Barque. 

Bark, Peruvian, is the bark of various 
species of trees of the genus Cinchona, found 
in many parts of South America, but more 
particularly in Peru, and having medicinal 
properties. It was formerly called Jesuit's 
bark, from its having been introduced into 
Europe by Jesuits. Its medicinal properties 
depend upon the presence of quinine, which 
is now extracted from the bark, imported, 
and prescribed in place of nauseous mouth¬ 
fuls of bark. See Cinchona. 

Barker’s Mill, also called Scottish tur¬ 
bine, a hydraulic machine on the principle 
of what is known as the hydraulic tourni¬ 
quet. This consists of an upright vessel free 
to rotate about a vertical axis, and having 
at its lower end two discharging pipes pro¬ 
jecting horizontally on either side and bent 
in opposite directions at the ends, through 
which the water is discharged horizontally, 
the direction of discharge being mainly at 
right angles to a line joining the discharging 
orifice to the axis. The backward pressures 
at the bends of the tubes, arising from the 
two issuing jets of water, cause the appara¬ 
tus to revolve in an opposite direction to 
the issuing fluid. 

Barking, a town, England, county of Es¬ 
sex, on the Boding, 7 miles N.E. from Lon¬ 
don, with some important manufacturing 
works. Near it is the outfall of the sewage 
of a large part of London. Pop. 14,301. 

Barkston Ash, a pari. div. of the West 
Biding of Yorkshire. 

Bark-stove, Bark-bed, a sort of hot¬ 
house for forcing or for growing plants that 
require a great heat combined with mois¬ 
ture, both of which are supplied by the fer¬ 
mentation that sets up in a bed of spent 
tanner’s bark contained in a brick pit under 
glass. 

Bar'laam and Jos'aphat, a famous medi¬ 
aeval spiritual romance, which is in its main 


details a Christianized version of the Hindu 
legends of Buddha. The story first ap¬ 
peared in Greek in the works of Joannes 
Damascenus in the eighth century. The 
compilers of the Gesta Bomanorum, Boccac¬ 
cio, Gower, and Shakespeare have all drawn 
materials from it. 

Bar-le-duc (bar-l-duk), a town of North¬ 
east Erance, capital, of dep. Meuse, with 
manufactures of cotton and woollen stuffs, 
leather, confectionery, &c. Pop. 15,140. 

Barlet'ta, a seaport in South Italy, prov¬ 
ince of Bari, on the Adriatic, with a fine 
Gothic cathedral; it has a considerable 
export trade in grain, wine, almonds, &c. 
Pop. 31,994. 

Bar'ley, the name of several cereal plants 
of the genus Hordcum, order Grandnem 
(grasses), yielding a grain used as food and 
also for making malt, from which are pre¬ 
pared beer, porter, and whisky. Barley 
has been known and cultivated from re¬ 
mote antiquity, and beer was made from it 
among the Egyptians. Excellent barley is 
produced in Britain. The species princi¬ 
pally cultivated are Hordeum disllchum, 
two-rowed barley; II. vulgdre, four-rowed 
barley; and II. hexastichum, six-rowed, of 
which the small variety is the sacred barley 
of the ancients. The varieties of the four 
and six rowed species are generally coarser 
than those of the two-rowed, and adapted 
for a poorer soil and more exposed situation. 
Some of these are called here or bigg. In 
Britain barley occupies about the same area 
as wheat, but in N. America the extent of 
it as a crop is comparatively small, being 
in Canada, however, relatively greater than 
in the States, and the Canadian barley is 
of very high quality. Barley is better 
adapted for cold climates than any other 
grain, and some of the coarser varieties are 
cultivated where no other cereal can be 
grown. Some species of the genus, three 
of which are natives of Britain, are mere 
grasses. Pot or Scotch barley is the grain 
deprived of the husk in a mill. Pearl bar¬ 
ley is the grain polished and rounded and 
deprived of husk and pellicle. Patent bar¬ 
ley is the farina obtained by grinding pearl 
barley. Barley-water, a decoction of pearl 
barle}q is used in medicine as possessing 
emollient, diluent, and expectorant qualities. 

Barley-sugar, pure sugar melted and al¬ 
lowed to solidify into an amorphous mass 
without crystallizing. 

BarTow, Joel, an American pioet and di* 
plouiatist; born 1754. After an active and 


BARM 


BARNES. 


changeful life aa chaplain, lawyer, editor, 
land-agent, lecturer, and consul, he went to 
Paris and acquired a fortune. On his re¬ 
turn to America he was appointed minister 
plenipotentiary to Prance (1811), but died 
near Cracow in 1812 on his way to meet 
Napoleon. His principal poem, the Colum- 
biad, dealing with American history from 
the time of Columbus, was published in 
1807. 

Barm. See Yeast. 

Bar'mecides (-sldz), a distinguished Per¬ 
sian family, whose virtues and splendour 
form a favourite subject with Mohammedan 
poets and historians. Two eminent mem¬ 
bers of this family were Khaled ben-Bar- 
mek, tutor of Haroun Alrashid; and his 
son Yahya, grand vizier of Haroun. The 
expression Barmecides Feast, meaning a vi¬ 
sionary banquet or make-believe entertain¬ 
ment, originates from the Barber’s story of 
his Sixth Brother in the Arabian Nights’ 
Entertainments. 

Bar'men, a German city on the Wupper, 
in the Prussian Rhine Province, government 
of Diisseldorf, and forming a continuation 
of the town of Elberfeld, in the valley of 
Barmen. It has extensive ribbon and 
other textile manufactures; also dye-works, 
manufactures of chemicals, metal wares, 
buttons, yarns, iron, machines, pianos, or¬ 
gans, soap, &c. Pop. 103,068. 

Bar'nabas, the surname given by the 
apostles to Joses, a fellow-labourer of Paul, 
and, like him, ranked as an apostle. He 
is said to have founded at Antioch the first 
Christian community, to have been first 
bishop of Milan, and to have suffered mar¬ 
tyrdom at Cyprus. His festival is held on 
the 11th June. 

Barnabas, Saint, Epistle of, an epistle 
in twenty-one chapters unanimously ascribed 
to Barnabas by early Christian writers, but 
without any support of internal evidence. 
It was probably written between 119 and 
126 B.C., by one who was not a Jew, and 
under the influence of Alexandrian Juda- 
istic thought. 

Barnabites, an order of monks founded 
in Milan in 1530 and named after the Milan 
church of St. Barnabas which was allotted 
them to preach in. A few monasteries of 
the order still exist in France and Italy. 

Bar'nacle, the name of a family (Lepa- 
didce) of marine crustaceous animals, order 
Cirripedia. They are enveloped by a mantle 
and shell, composed of five principal valves 
and several smaller pieces, joined together 

387 


by a membrane attached to their circumfer¬ 
ence; and they are furnished with a long, 
flexible, fleshy stalk or peduncle, provided 
with muscles, by which they at- 
tach themselves to ships’ bot- 
£|® toms, submerged timber, &c. 
They feed on small marine ani- 
mals, brought within their reach 
MOTsa by the water and secured by 
their tentacula. Some of the 
Hpf 'M lar S er s P ec ies are edible. Ac- 
Wm cording to an old fable these 
-Ay animals produced barnacle geese 
(see next art.). 

pusXS/Iro). Barnacle Goose ( Anser Ber- 
nicla or leucopsis ), a summer 
visitant of the northern seas, in size rather 
smaller than the common wild goose, and 
having the forehead and cheeks white, the 
upper body and neck black. A fable asserts 
that the crustaceans called barnacles (See 
preceding article) changed into geese, and 
various theories have been framed to account 
for its origin. Max Muller supposes the 
geese wex*e originally called Hiberniculce or 
Irish geese, and that barnacle is a corrup¬ 
tion of this; but the resemblance of a bar¬ 
nacle to a goose hanging by the head may 
account for it. r Ihe Brent Goose is also 
sometimes called the Barnacle Goose, but 
the two should be discriminated. 

Barnard-Castle, a town, England, county 
Durham, giving name to a pari. div. of the 
county. 'I here are a large thread-mill and 
carpet manufactories; the Bowes Museum 
and Art Gallery, endowed by private muni¬ 
ficence, and costing over £80,000; and the 
Northern Counties School, richly endowed. 
The castle was originally built about 1178 
by Bernard Baliol, grandfather of John 
Baliol. Pop. 1891, 4341. 

Barnaul', town of Siberia, government of 
Tomsk, on the Barnaulski, near its influx 
into the Obi. The town is of wood but well 
built, with museum, observatory, &c. It is 
an important mining centre for lead, copper, 
and silver, has 120 furnaces, a copper mint, 
kilns, and factories. Pop. 14,000. 

Barnave (bar-nav), Antoine-Pierre- 
Joseph - Marie, a distinguished French 
revolutionist, who successfully maintained 
against Mirabeau the right of the National 
Assembly as against that of the king to 
declare for peace or war, but afterwards as¬ 
serted the inviolability of the king’s person, 
was impeached, condemned, and guillotined. 
Born 1761, died 1793. 

Barnes (biirnz), Albert, theologian, born 


BARNES-BAROMETER. 


in the state of New York, 1798. In 1825 he 
was ordained pastor of the Presbyterian 
Church of Morristown, New Jersey, and 
from 1830 till his death in 1870 had charge 
of the first Presbyterian Church in Phila¬ 
delphia. He is chiefly known by his Notes 
on the New Testament, and Notes on the 
Old Testament. 

Barnes, William, English dialect poet 
and philologist, born in Dorsetshire in 1800, 
died 1886. Of humble birth, he first entered 
a solicitor’s office, then taught a school in 
Dorchester, and having taken orders became 
rector of Winterbourne Came in his native 
county and died there. He acquired a know¬ 
ledge of many languages, and published 
works on Anglo-Saxon and English, as An 
Anglo-Saxon Delectus, A Philological Gram¬ 
mar, grounded upon English, Grammar and 
Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, &c., but is 
best known by his Poems of Rural Life in 
the Dorset dialect, and Rural Poems in 
common English. 

Bar'net, a town of England, in Herts, 11 
miles from London, where was fought in 
1471 a battle between the Yorkists and 
Lancastrians, resulting in the defeat of the 
latter and the death of Warwick, Edward 
IV. being thus established on the throne. 

Barneveldt (bar'ne-velt), John van Ol¬ 
den, grand pensionary of Holland during 
the struggle with Philip II. of Spain; born 
in 1549. After the assassination of William 
of Orange, and the conquest of the south 
provinces by the Spaniards under Parma, 
he headed the embassy to secure English 
aid. Finding, however, that the Earl of 
Leicester proved a worse than useless ally, 
he secured the elevation of the young Mau¬ 
rice of Nassau to the post of stadtholder, at 
the same time by his own wise administra¬ 
tion doing much to restore the prosperity of 
the state. After serving as ambassador to 
France and England, he succeeded in 1607 
in obtaining from Spain a recognition of the 
independence of the States, and two years 
later in concluding with her the twelve 
years’ truce. Maurice, ambitious of abso¬ 
lute rule and jealous of the influence of 
Barneveldt, was interested in the continu¬ 
ance of the war, and lost no opportunity of 
hostile action against the great statesman. 
In this he was aided by the strongly-marked 
theologic division in the state between the 
Gomarites (the Cal vinistic and popular party) 
and the Arminians, of whom Barneveldt was 
c. supporter. Maurice, who had thrown in 
his lot with the Gomarites, encouraged the 


idea that the Arminians were the friends of 
Spain, and procured the assembly of a synod 
at Dort (1618) which violently condemned 
them. Barneveldt and his friends Grotius 
and Hoogerbeets were arrested, and sub¬ 
jected to a mock trial; and Barneveldt, to 
whom the country owed its political exis¬ 
tence and the commons their retention of 
legislative power, was beheaded on May 
13th, 1619. His sons four years later at¬ 
tempted to avenge his death; one was be¬ 
headed, the other escaped to Spain. 

Barns'ley, a municipal bor. of England, 
W. Riding of Yorkshire, giving name to a 
pari, division of the co. Its staple indus¬ 
tries are the manufacture of linens, iron, and 
steel, and there are numerous collieries in 
the neighbourhood. Pop. 1891, 35,427. 

Barn'staple, a municipal borough in Eng¬ 
land, county of Devon, giving name to a park 
division of the co., on the right bank of 
the Taw, where it receives the Yeo; manu¬ 
factures of lace, paper, pottery, furniture, 
toys and turnery, and leather. Pop. 13,058. 

Baroach. See Broach. 

Baro'da, a non-tributary state, but subor¬ 
dinate to the Indian government; situated 
in the north of the Bombay presidency. It 
consists of a number of detached territories 
in the province of Guzerat, and is generally 
level, fertile, and well cultivated, producing 
luxuriant crops of grain, cotton, tobacco, 
opium, sugar-cane, and oil-seeds. There is a 
famous breed of large white oxen used as 
draught cattle. Area, 8570 sq. miles; pop. 
(1881), 2,185,005. The ruler is called the 
Gaekwar. The dissensions of the Baroda 
family have more than once called for Brit¬ 
ish intervention, and in 1875 the ruling 
Gaekwar was tried and deposed in connec¬ 
tion with the charge of attempt to poison 
the British resident. —Baroda, the capital, 
is the third city in the Bombay presidency. 
It consists of the city proper within the 
walls and the suburbs without, and is largely 
composed of poor and crowded houses, but 
has also some fine buildings, and is noted 
for its Hindu temples kept up by the state. 
Pop. 106,512 (including troops in the adjoin¬ 
ing cantonment). 

Barom'eter, an instrument for measuring 
the weight or pressure of the atmosphere 
and thus determining changes in the weather, 
the height of mountains, and other pheno¬ 
mena. It had its origin about the middle 
of the seventeenth century in an experiment 
of Torricelli, an Italian, who found that if 
a glass tube about 3 feet in length, open at 

388 


Barometer. 


one end only, and filled with mercury, were 
placed vertically with the open end in a cup 
of the same fluid metal, a portion of the 
mercury descended into the cup, leaving a 



column only about 30 inches in height in 
the tube. He inferred, therefore, that the 
atmospheric pressure on the surface of the 
mercury in the cup forced it up the tube 
to the height of 30 inches, and that this 
was so because the weight of a column of air 
from the cup to the top of the atmosphere 
was only equal to that of a column of mer¬ 
cury of the same base and 30 inches high. 
Pascal confirmed the conclusion in 1645; six 
years afterwards it was found by Perrier 
that the height of the mercury in the Tor¬ 
ricellian tube varied with the weather; and, 
in 1665, Boyle proposed to use the instru¬ 
ment to measure the height of mountains. 

The common or cistern barometer, which 
is a modification of the Torricellian tube, con¬ 
sists of a glass tube 33 inches in length and 
about one-third of an inch in diameter, her¬ 
metically sealed at the top, and having the 
lower end resting in a small vessel contain¬ 
ing mercury, or bent upwards and terminat¬ 
ing in a glass bulb partly occupied by the 
mercury and open to the atmosphere. The 
tube is first filled w r ith purified mercury, 
and then inverted, and there is affixed to it 
a scale to mark the height of the mercurial 
column, which comparatively seldom rises 
above 31 or sinks below 28 inches. In gen¬ 
eral the rising of the mercury presages fair 

389 


weather, and its falling the contrary, a great 
and sudden fall being the usual presage of 
a storm. The weather-points on the ordi¬ 
nary barometric scale are as follows:—At 
28 inches, stormy weather; 28J?, much rain 
or snow; 29, rain or snow; 29^, changeable; 

30, fair or frost; 30A, settled fair or frost; 

31, very dry weather or hard frost. Cer¬ 
tain attendant signs, however, have also to 
be noted: thus, when fair or foul weather 
follows almost immediately upon the rise or 
fall of the mercury, the change is usually 
of short duration; while if the change of 
weather be delayed for some days after the 
variation in the mercury, it is usually of 
long continuance. The direction of the 
wind has also to be taken into account. 

The siphon barometer consists of a bent 
tube, generally of uniform bore, having 
two unequal legs, the longer closed, the 
shorter open. A sufficient quantity of mer¬ 
cury having been introduced to fill the 
longer leg, the instrument is set upright, 
and the mercury takes such a position that 
the difference of the levels in the two legs 
represents the pressure of the atmosphere. 
In the best siphon barometers there are two 
scales, one for each leg, the divisions on one 
being reckoned upwards, and on the other 
downwards from an intermediate zero point, 
so that the sum of the two readings is the 




Wheel Barometer. 


difference of levels of the mercury in the 
two branches. 

The wheel barometer is the one that is 
most commonly used for domestic purposes. 
It is far from being accurate, but it is often 





























































BAROMETER-BARONET. 


preferred for ordinary use on account of the 
greater range of its scale, by which small 
differences in the height of the column of 
mercury are more easily observed. It usu¬ 
ally consists of a siphon barometer, having 
a float resting on the surface of the mercury 
in the open branch, a thread attached to 
the float passing over a pulley, and having 
a weight as a counterpoise to the float at 
its extremity. As the mercury rises and 
falls the thread and weight turn the pulley, 
which again moves the index of the dial. 

The mountain barometer is a portable 
mercurial barometer with a tripod support 
and a long scale for measuring the altitude 
of mountains. To prevent breakage, through 
the oscillations of such a heavy liquid as 
mercury, it is usually carried inverted, or it 
is furnished with a movable basin and a 
screw, by means of which the mercury may 
be forced up to the top of the tube. For 
delicate operations, such as the measure¬ 
ment of altitudes, the scale of the barometer 
is furnished with a nonius or vernier, which 
greatly increases the minuteness and accu¬ 
racy of the scale. For the rough estimate 
of altitudes the following rule is sufficient: 
—As the sum of the heights of the mercury 
at the bottom and top of the mountain is 
to their difference, so is 52,000 to the height 
to be measured, in feet. (See also Heights, 
Measurement of.) In exact barometric obser¬ 
vations two corrections require to be made, 
one for the depression of the mercury in the 
tube by capillary attraction, the other for 
temperature, which increases or diminishes 
the bulk of the mercury. In regard to the 
measurement of heights the general rule is 
to subtract the ten-thousandth part of the 
observed altitude for every degree of Fah¬ 
renheit above 32°. 

In the aneroid barometer, as its name 
implies (Gr. a, not, neros, liquid), no fluid 
is employed, the 
action being de¬ 
pendent upon 
the susceptibil¬ 
ity to atmo¬ 
spheric pressure 
shown by a flat 
circular metal¬ 
lic chamber 
from which the 
air has been Aneroid Barometer, 

partially ex¬ 
hausted, and which has a flexible top and 
bottom of corrugated metal plate. By an 
ingenious arrangement of springs and levers 


the depression or elevation* of the surface 
of the box is registered by an index on the 
dial, by which means it is also greatly mag¬ 
nified, being given in inches to correspond 
with the mercurial barometer. Aneroids 
are, however, generally less reliable than mer¬ 
curial barometers, with which they should be 
frequently compared. The cut shows an 
aneroid without its case. A is the partially 
exhausted chamber, B a strong spring con¬ 
nected with its top and with the base-plate, 
c a lever from B connected through the 
bent lever D with the chain E coiled round 
F, and always kept tense by the spiral 
spring G. As the top of A rises or falls its 
motion is transmitted by B to the levers and 
chain so as to move the needle H. At J is 
seen the tube through which the air is 
drawn from A. 

Bar'on, originally, in the feudal system, 
the vassal or immediate tenant of any supe¬ 
rior; but the term w r as afterwards restricted 
to the king’s barons, and again to the greater 
of these only, who attended the Great Coun¬ 
cil, or who, at a later date, w r ere summoned 
by writ to Parliament. It was the second 
rank of nobility, until dukes and marquises 
w r ere introduced and placed above the earls, 
and viscounts also set above the barons, 
who, therefore, now hold the lowest rank 
in the British peerage. The present barons 
are of three classes: (1) barons by pre¬ 
scription, whose ancestors have immemori- 
ally sat in the Upper House; (2) by patent; 
(3) by tenure, i.e. holding the title as an¬ 
nexed to land. The coronet is a plain gold 
circle with six balls or large pearls on its 
edge, the connected cap being of crimson 
velvet.— Baron and feme, a term used for 
husband and wife in the English law.— 
Baron of beef, two sirloins not cut asunder. 

Bar'onet, a hereditary dignity in Great 
Britain and Ireland, next in rank to the 
peerage, originally instituted by James I. 
in 1611, nominally to promote the coloniza¬ 
tion and defence of Ulster, each baronet, 
on his creation, being then obliged to pay 
into the treasury a sum of £1095, exclusive 
of fees. Baronets in Ireland were instituted 
in 1620, and in Scotland in 1625, the latter 
being called Baronets of Scotland and Nova 
Scotia, because their creation was originally 
intended to further the colonization of Nova 
Scotia. But the baronets of Scotland and 
of Ireland have been baronets of the United 
Kingdom if created since 1707 and 1801 
respectively. A baronet has the title of 
‘Sir’ prefixed to his Christian and surname, 

390 







BARONIUS • 

and his wife is ‘Lady’ so-and-so. Baronets 
rank before all knights. They have as their 
badge a ‘bloody hand’ (the arms of Ulster), 
that is, a left hand, erect and open, cut off 
at the wrist, and red in colour. 

Baro'nius, or Baronio, C.esar, Italian 
ecclesiastical historian, born 1538; educated 
at Naples; in 1557 went to Rome; was one 
of the first pupils of St. Philip of Neri, and 
member of the oratory founded by him; 
afterwards cardinal and librarian of the 
Vatican Library. He owed these digni¬ 
ties to the services which he rendered the 
church by his Ecclesiastical Annals, com¬ 
prising valuable documents from the papal 
archives, on which he laboured from the 
year 1580 until his death, June 30, 1607. 
They were continued, though with less 
power, by other writers, of whom Ray- 
naldi takes the first rank. 

Barons’ War, the war carried on for sev¬ 
eral years by Simon de Montfort and other 
barons of Henry III. against the king, be¬ 
ginning in 1263. 

Barony, a manor or landed estate under 
a baron, who formerly had certain rights of 
jurisdiction in his barony and could hold 
special courts. In Ireland baronies are still 
the chief subdivisions of the counties. 

Barouche (ba-rosh'), a four-wheeled car¬ 
riage with a falling top and two inside seats 
in which four persons can sit, two fronting 
two. 

Barque (bark), a three-masted vessel of 
which the foremast and mainmast are 
square-rigged, but the mizzenmast has fore- 
and-aft sails only. 

Barquesimeto (bar-ka-sS-ma'to), a city 
in the north of Venezuela, capital of the pro¬ 
vince of Barquesimeto. Population about 
12 , 000 . 

Bar'ra, or Bar, a small kingdom in Africa, 
near the mouth of the Gambia. The Man- 
dingoes, who form a considerable part of 
the inhabitants, are Mohammedans and 
the most civilized people on the Gambia. 
Pop. 200,000. The coast here belongs to 
Britain. 

Barra, an island of the Outer Hebrides, 
w. coast of Scotland, belonging to Inver¬ 
ness-shire; 8 miles long and from 2 to 5 
broad, of irregular outline, with rocky 
coasts, surface hilly but furnishing excel¬ 
lent pasture. On the w. coast the Atlantic, 
beating with all its force, has hollowed out 
vast caves and fissures. Large herds of 
cattle and flocks of sheep are reared on the 
island. The coasts of this and adjacent is- 

391 


— BARRAS. 

lands abound with fish, and fishing is an im¬ 
portant industry. Pop. 1887. 

Barra, a town about 3 miles east of 
Naples. Pop. 8464. 

Barracan', strictly, a thick strong stuff 
made in Persia and Armenia of camel’s 
hair, but the name has been applied to 
various wool, flax, and cotton fabrics. 

Bar'rack (Spanish barraca), originally a 
small cabin or hut for troops, but now ap¬ 
plied to the permanent buildings in which 
troops are lodged. Despite the obvious 
evils of the quartering system, the intro¬ 
duction of barracks met with considerable 
opposition in the British Parliament as dan¬ 
gerous to liberty, by estranging the soldier 
from the citizen, and fitting him to become 
a tool of despotism. 

Barrackpur (-por'), a town and military 
cantonment, Hindustan, on the left bank 
of the Hooghly, 10 miles n.n.e. of Calcutta. 
The suburban residence of the viceroy is 
in Barrackpur Park. Pop. 17,702. 

Barracoon', a negro barrack or slave 
depot, formerly plentiful on the west coast 
of Africa, in Cuba, Brazil, &c. 

Barrafran'ca, a town of Sicily, prov, 
Caltanissetta. Pop. 9052. 

Barramun'da. See Ceratodus. 

Barranquilla (bar-ran-kel'ya), a port of 
S. America, in Colombia, on a branch of 
the river Magdalena, near its entrance into 
the Caribbean Sea, connected by rail with 
the seaport Sabanilla. Pop. 11,595. 

Barras (ba-ra), Paul Francois Jean 
Nicholas, Comte de, member of the French 
national convention and of the executive 
directory, born in Provence 1755, died 1829. 
After serving in the army in India and Africa, 
he joined the revolutionary party and was a 
deputy in the tiers-etat. He took part in the 
attack upon the Bastille and upon the Tuile- 
ries, and voted for the death of Louis XVI. In 
the subsequent events he displeased Robes¬ 
pierre, and on this account joined the mem¬ 
bers of the committee, who foresaw danger 
awaiting them, and being intrusted with 
the chief command of the forces of his 
party he made himself master of Robes¬ 
pierre. On Feb. 4, 1795, he was elected 
president of the convention, and on Oct. 5, 
when the troops of the sections which 
favoured the royal cause approached, Barras 
for a second time received the chief com¬ 
mand of the forces of the convention. On 
this occasion he employed General Bona¬ 
parte, for whom he procured the chief com¬ 
mand of the army of the interior, and after- 



BARRATRY - 

wards the command of the army in Italy. 
From the events of the 18th Fructidor 
(Sept. 4, 1797) he governed absolutely until 
the 13th June, 1799, when Si6yks entered 
the directory, and in alliance with Bona¬ 
parte procured his downfall in the revolu¬ 
tion of the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799). 
He afterwards resided at Brussels, Mar¬ 
seilles, Rome, and Montpellier under sur¬ 
veillance, returning to Paris only after the 
restoration of the Bourbons. 

Barratry, in commerce, any fraud com¬ 
mitted by the master or mariners of a ship, 
whereby the owners, freighters, or insurers 
are injured; as by evading foreign port- 
duties; deviation from the usual course of 
the voyage, by the captain, for his own 
private purposes; trading with an enemy, 
whereby the ship is exposed to seizure; wil¬ 
ful violation of a blockade; wilful resistance 
of search by a belligerent vessel, where the 
right of search is legally exercised; fraudu¬ 
lent negligence; embezzlement of any part 
of the cargo, &c. 

Barratry, Common, in law, the stirring 
up of lawsuits and quarrels between other 
persons, the party guilty of this offence 
being indictable as a common barrator or 
barretor. The commencing of suits in the 
name of a fictitious plaintiff is common bar¬ 
ratry. 

Barre, Washington co., Vt., the seat of 
Goddard Seminary. Pop. 1890, 6812. 

Barrel, a well-known variety of wooden 
vessel; also used as a definite measure and 
weight. A barrel of beer is 36 gals., of 
flour 196 lbs., of beef or pork 200 lbs. 

Barrel-organ, a musical instrument usu¬ 
ally carried by street musicians, in which a 
barrel studded with pegs or staples, when 
turned round, opens a series of valves to 
admit air to a set of pipes, or acts upon 
wire strings like those of the piano, thus 
producing a fixed series of tunes. 

Barren Grounds, a large tract in the 
North-west Territories of Canada, extend¬ 
ing northwards from Churchill River to the 
Arctic Ocean between Great Bear and Great 
Slave Lake and Hudson’s Bay. It largely 
consists of swamps, lakes, and bare rock. 

Barrie,Ontario, Canada, on the Meaford 
Branch of Grand Trunk Railway. Pop. 
1891,5550. 

Barrhead', a town, Scotland, county Ren¬ 
frew, on the Levern, 7 miles s.w. of Glasgow; 
chief industries: printing of cottons, the spin¬ 
ning of cotton yarn, dyeing, bleaching, iron 
and. brass founding. Pop. 6566. 


-BARRISTER. 

Bar'ricade, an obstruction hastily raised 
to defend a narrow passage, such as a street, 
defile, or bridge. When beams, chains, che- 
vaux-de-frise and prepared materials are 
wanting, wagons, barrows, casks, chests, 
branches of trees, paving-stones, &c., may 
be used for the purpose. They have been 
frequently used in popular outbursts, espe¬ 
cially in Paris, though their accessibility to 
attack by breaking through the houses of 
adjoining streets makes a prolonged tenure 
against troops impossible. 

Barrier Reef, a coral reef which extends 
for 1260 miles off the n.e. coast of Aus¬ 
tralia, at a distance from land ranging from 
10 to 100 miles. In sailing from Sydney 
through Torres Straits vessels have the 
choice of the inner and outer routes; the 
former, though narrow, gives a channel of 
about 12 fathoms deep throughout, and pro¬ 
tected from the sea by the reefs themselves; 
the outer channel is less accurately sur¬ 
veyed and still dangerous. 

Barrier Treaty, the treaty (1718) by 
which, when the Spanish Netherlands were 
ceded to Austria, the Dutch secured the 
right to garrison several border fortresses of 
the country at the expense of Austria, to 
serve as a barrier against France. It was 
declared void in 1781 by Joseph II. 

Bar'rington, Daines, son of Viscount 
Barrington, lawyer, antiquarian, and natu¬ 
ralist; born 1727, died 1800. He wrote 
many papers for the Royal Society and the 
Society of Antiquaries; published some 
separate works, and was a correspondent of 
White of Selborne. 

Bar'rister, in England or Ireland, an 
advocate or pleader, who has been admitted 
by one of the Inns of Court, viz. the Inner 
Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, or 
Gray’s Inn, to plead at the bar. It is they 
who speak before all the higher courts, being 
instructed in regard to the case they have in 
hand by means of the brief which they re¬ 
ceive from the solicitor who may happen to 
engage their services, and which has a cer¬ 
tain fee endorsed upon it as the sum to be 
paid for the barrister’s services in the case. 
Before a student can be admitted to the bar 
he must have been a member of one of those 
societies, and have kept twelve terms there. 
The examinations, which had dwindled into 
mere forms, have been revived and made 
more stringent. Barristers are sometimes 
called litter or outer barristers, to distinguish 
them from the queen’s (king’s) counsel, who 
sit within the bar in the courts and are dis- 

392 



BARROS-BARROW-IN-FURNESS 


tinguished by a silk gown. Barristers are 
also spoken of as counsel , as in the phrase 
opinion of counsel , that is, a written opinion 
on a case obtained from a barrister before 
whom the facts have been laid. All judges 
are selected from the barristers. A barri¬ 
ster cannot maintain an action for his fees, 
which are considered purely honorary. A 
revising barrister is a barrister appointed 
to revise the list of persons in any locality 
who have a vote for a member of Parliament. 
The term corresponding to barrister is in 
Scotland advocate, in the United States 
counsellor-at-law; but the position of the 
latter is not quite the same. 

Bar'ros, Joao de, Portuguese historian; 
born 1496. He was attached to the court 
of King Emmanuel, who, after the publica¬ 
tion in 1520 of Barros’ Romance, the Em¬ 
peror Clarimond, urged him to undertake a 
history of the Portuguese in India, which 
appeared thirty-two years later. King 
John III. appointed Barros governorof the 
Portuguese settlements in Guinea, and 
general agent for these colonies, farther 
presenting him in 1530 with the province 
of Maranham in Brazil, for the purpose of 
colonization. For his losses by the last 
enterprise the king indemnified him, and he 
died in retirement in 1570. Besides his 
standard work, Asia Portuguesa, he wrote 
a moral dialogue on compromise, and the 
first Portuguese Grammar. 

Barro'sa, a village, Spain, near the s.w. 
coast of Andalusia, near which General 
Graham, when abandoned by the Spaniards, 
defeated a superior French force in 1811. 

Bar row, a river in the south-east of Ire¬ 
land, province Leinster, rising on the bor¬ 
ders of the King’s and Queen’s Counties, 
and after a southerly course joining the 
Suir in forming Waterford harbour. It is 
next in importance to the Shannon, and is 
navigable for vessels of 200 tons for 25 
miles above the sea. 

Bar'row, Isaac, an eminent English 
mathematician and divine, born in London 
in 1630, studied at the Charterhouse and 
at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he 
became a fellow in 1649. After a course 
of medical studies he turned to divinity, 
mathematics, and astronomy, graduated 
anew at Oxford in 1652, and, failing to 
obtain the Cambridge Greek professorship, 
went abroad. In 1659 he was ordained; 
in 1660 elected Greek professor at Cam¬ 
bridge; in 1662 professor of geometry in 
Gresham College; and in 1663 Lucasian 

393 


professor of mathematics at Cambridge, a 
post which he resigned to Newton in 1669. 
In 1670 he was created D.D., in 1672 master 
of Trinity College, and in 1675 vice-chan¬ 
cellor of Cambridge University. He died 
in 1677. His principal mathematical works 
(written in Latin) were (an edition of which 
was edited by Whewell): Euclidis Elementa, 
1655; Euclidis Data, 1657; Mathematicae 
Lectiones, 1664-66; Lectiones Opticae, 1669; 
Lectiones Geometricae, 1670; Archimedis 
Opera; Apollonii Conicorum lib. iv.; Theo- 
dosii Spherica, 1675. All his English works, 
which are theological, were left in MS., and 
published by Dr. Tillotson in 1685. As a 
mathematician Barrow was deemed inferior 
only to Newton. 

Barrow, Sir John, Bart., geographer 
and man of letters, born in 1764 in Lanca¬ 
shire. At the age of sixteen he went in 
a whaler to Greenland ; was subsequently 
teacher of mathematics in a school at 
Greenwich; and was sent with Lord Ma¬ 
cartney in his embassy to China in 1792, to 
take charge of philosophical instruments for 
presentation to the Chinese emperor. His 
account of this journey was of great value, 
and not less so was the account of his travels 
in South Africa, whither he went in 1797 as 
secretary to Macartney. In 1804 he was 
appointed second secretary to the admiralty, 
a post occupied by him for forty years. In 
1835 he was made a baronet; and he died 
in 1848, three years after his retirement. 
Besides the accounts of his own travels he 
published lives of Earl Macartney, Lord 
Anson, Lord Howe, and Drake; Voyages 
of Discovery and Research within the 
Arctic Regions; an autobiography of him¬ 
self written at the age of eighty-three, &c. 

Bar'row-in-Fur'ness, a seaport and par¬ 
liamentary borough of Lancashire, in the 
district of Furness, opposite the island of 
Walney, a town that has increased from a 
fishing hamlet with 100 inhabitants in 1848 
to a town of 51,712 inhabitants in 1881. 
Its prosperity is due to the mines of red 
hematite iron-ore which abounds in the 
district, and to the railway rendering its 
excellent natural harbour available. It 
has several large docks; besides graving- 
docks, a floating-dock capable of receiving 
vessels of 3000 tons, a large timber pond, 
&c. There is an extensive trade in timber, 
cattle, grain, and flour; and iron-ore and 
pig-iron are largely shipped. It has numer¬ 
ous blast-furnaces, and one of the largest 
Bessemer-steel works in the world. Besides 



BARROWS 


BAR-SUR-AUBE. 


iron-works a large business is done in ship¬ 
building, the making of railway wagons 
and rolling stock, _ropes, sails, bricks, &c. 
A town-hall erected at a cost of £60,000 
was opened in 1887. 

Bar'rows, mounds of earth or stones raised 
to mark the resting-place of the dead, and 
distinguished, according to their shape, as 
long, bold, bell, cone, broad barrows. The 
practice of barrow- 
burial is of un¬ 
known antiquity 
and almost uni¬ 
versal, barrows be¬ 
ing found all over 
Europe, in Nor¬ 
thern Africa, Asia 
Minor, Afghanis¬ 
tan, Western India, 
and in America. In 
the earliest bar- 
rows the inclosed 
bodies were simply 
laid upon the 
ground, with stone 
or bone imple¬ 
ments and weapons 
beside them. In 
barrows of later 
date the remains 
are generally in¬ 
closed in a stone 
cist. Frequently 
cremation preceded 
the erection of the 
barrow, the ashes 
being inclosed in 
an urn or cist. A detailed description of an 
ancient barrow-burial is given in the Anglo- 
Saxon poem Beowulf, and the accounts of 
the obsequies of Hector and Achilles in the 
Iliad and Odyssey are well known. 

Barrow Strait, the connecting channel 
between Lancaster Sound and Baffin’s Bay 
on the E. and the Polar Ocean on the w. 
Of great depth, with rocky and rugged 
shores. Named after Sir John Barrow. 

Bar'ry, Sir Charles, an English archi¬ 
tect, born in London 1795. After execu¬ 
ting numerous important buildings, such 
as the Reform Club-house, London, St. Ed¬ 
ward’s School, Birmingham, &c., he was 
appointed architect of the new Houses of 
Parliament at Westminster, a noble pile, 
with the execution of which he was occupied 
for more than twenty-four years. He was 
knighted in 1852, and died suddenly in 
1860. His son, Edward Middleton, R. A. 


(1830-18S0), was also a distinguished 
architect, and produced many important 
buildings, though he was disappointed in 
regard to his designs for the Albert Memo¬ 
rial, National Gallery, and New Law 
Courts. 

Barry, Comtesse du. See Da Barry. 

Barry, James, a painter and writer on 
art, born at Cork 1741 • studied abroad with 

the aid of Burke; 
was elected Royal 
Academician on 
his return; and 
worked seven years 
on the paintings 
for the hall of the 
Society for the En¬ 
couragement of tLtJ 
Arts. In 1773 he 
published his In¬ 
quiry into the Real 
and Imaginary Ob¬ 
structions to the 
Increase of the 
Arts in England; 
and in 1782 was 
elected professor of 
painting to the 
Academy. He was 
expelled in 1797 
on the ground of 
his authorship of 
the Letter to the 
Society of Dilet¬ 
tanti. His chief 
painting was his 
Victors at Olym¬ 
pia. He died in 1806. 

Barry Cornwall, the assumed name of 
Bryan Waller Procter. 

Bar'sabas, son of Alpheus, brother of 
James the Less and of Jude, and one of the 
candidates for the apostolical office left 
vacant by Judas Iscariot. According to 
tradition he was afterwards bishop of 
Eleutheropolis, near Jerusalem, and suffered 
martyrdom. Another Barsabas, surnamed 
Judas, supposed to be the brother of the 
above, is mentioned in the Acts as a com¬ 
panion of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch. 
He is supposed to have died in Jerusalem 
at a very advanced age. 

Bar-shot, a double-headed shot consisting 
of two pieces connected by a bar. 

Bar-sur-Aube (bilr-sur-ob), an ancient 
town, France, dep. Aube, where, in 1814, a 
hotly-contested action was fought between 
Napoleon and the allies. Pop. 5000. 

394 



Bowl Barrow, 



Long Barrow. 



Twin Barrow. 















































bart—bartholin. 


Bart, Barth , or Baert (bart), Jean, a 
famous French sailor, born at Dunkirk, 
1650, the son of a poor fisherman. He 
became captain of a privateer, and after 
some brilliant exploits was appointed cap¬ 
tain in the royal navy. In recognition of 
his further services he was made commo¬ 
dore, subsequently receiving letters of 
nobility. Brusque, if not vulgar in manner, 
and ridiculed by the court for his indifference 
to ceremony, he made the navy of the 
nation everywhere respected, and furnished 
some of the most striking chapters in the 
romance of naval warfare. After the peace 
of Ryswick he lived quietly at Dunkirk, 
and died there while equipping a fleet to 
take part in the war of the Spanish Succes¬ 
sion, 1702. 

Bartas (bar-ta), Guillaume de Salluste 
du, a French poet, termed ‘ the divine ’ by 
contemporary English writers; born 1514. 
Principal work, La Sepmaine (The Week), a 
poem on the creation, translated into English 
by Sylvester. Died of wounds received at 
Ivry, 1590. 

Bartfeld (bart'felt), an old town, Hun¬ 
gary, county of Saros, on the Tepl, with 
mineral springs in the neighbourhood. Pop. 
5303. 

Barth (bart), Heinrich, African traveller, 
born at Hamburg 1821, died in 1865. He 
graduated at the University of Berlin as 
Ph.D. in 1844; and set out in 1845 to 
explore all the countries bordering on the 
Mediterranean. The first volume of his 
Wanderungen durch die Kiistenlander des 
Mittelmeeres w r as published in 1849, in 
which year he was invited by the English 
government to join Dr. Overweg in ac¬ 
companying Richardson’s expedition to Cen¬ 
tral Africa. The expedition set out from 
Tripoli in February, 1850, and in spite of 
the death both of Richardson and Overweg, 
Barth did not return to Tripoli till the 
autumn of 1855. His explorations, which 
extended over an area of about 2,000,0->0 
square miles, determined the course of the 
Niger and the true nature of the Sahara. 
The English account of it was entitled 
Travels and Discoveries in North and 
Central Africa (5 vols. 1857-58). An 
important work on the African languages 
was left unfinished. 

Barth, Jean. See Bart. 

Barthelamy (bar-tal-me), Jean Jacques, 
French author, born 1716. .He was edu¬ 
cated under the Jesuits, for holy orders, 
but declined all offers of clerical promotion 

395 


above the rank of Abbi. He gained con¬ 
siderable repute as a worker in philology and 
archaeology; and after his appointment as 
director of the Royal Cabinet of Medals, in 
1753, spent some time travelling in Italy 
collecting medals and antiquities. His best- 
known work, not inaptly characterized by 
himself as an unwieldy compilation, was the 
Travels of the Younger Anacharsis in Greece. 
It was very popular and was translated into 
various tongues. Though taking no part 
in the revolution he was arrested on a charge 
of aristocracy in 1793, but was set at liberty, 
and subsequently offered the post of libra¬ 
rian of the National Library. He died in 
1795. 

Barthelmy - Saint - Hilaire (bar-tal-me- 
san-te-lar), Jules, French scholar and 
statesman, born 1805, died in 1887. He 
was professor of Greek and Latin philo¬ 
sophy in the College of France, but resigned 
the chair after the coup d’etat of 1852 and 
refused to take the oath; was reappointed 
1862; in 1869 was returned to the Corps 
L6gislatif; after the revolution was a mem¬ 
ber of the National Assembly; was elected 
senator for life in 1875. He published a 
translation of Aristotle, and works on Buddh¬ 
ism, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, the 
Vedas, &c. 

Barthez (bar-ta), Paul Joseph, an emi¬ 
nent French physician, born at Montpellier 
1734, died 1806. At Montpellier he founded 
a medical school, which acquired a reputa¬ 
tion throughout all Europe. Having settled 
in Paris, he was appointed by the king 
consulting physician, and by the Duke of 
Orleans his first physician. The revolu¬ 
tion deprived him of the greatest part of 
his fortune, and drove him from Paris, but 
Napoleon brought him forth again, and 
loaded him in his advanced age with dig¬ 
nities. Among his numerous writings may 
be mentioned Nouvelle Mecanique des 
Mouvemens de 1’Homme et des Animaux; 
Traitement des Maladies Goutteuses; Con¬ 
sultation de Medecine, Ac. 

Bartholdi (bar-tolde), Auguste, French 
sculptor, born 1833; best known as the artist 
of the colossal statue of Liberty now over¬ 
looking the harbour of New York. 

Bartholin (bar'to-lin), Kasfar, Swedish 
writer, born 1585, died 1630. He studied 
medicine, philosophy, and theology; was 
made Doctor of Medicine at Basel in 1610, 
rector of the University of Copenhagen 
1618, and professor of theology 1624. His 
Institutiones Anatomicae was for long a 



BARTHOLOMEW-BARTLETT. 


standard text-book in the universities. His 
son, Thomas, bom at Copenhagen 1616, 
died 1680, was equally celebrated as a phi¬ 
lologist, naturalist, and physician. He was 
professor of anatomy at Copenhagen, 1648; 
physician to the king, Christian V., in 1670; 
and councillor of state, 1675. His sons, 
Kaspar (born 1654, died 1704) and Thomas 
(born 1659, died 1690) were also highly 
distinguished—the first as an anatomist, 
the other as an archaeologist. 

BarthoTomew, the apostle, is probably 
the same person as Nathanael , mentioned 
in the Gospel of St. John as an upright 
, Israelite and one of the first disciples of 
-Jesus. He is said to have taught Chris¬ 
tianity in the south of Arabia, into which, 
according to Eusebius, he carried the Gos¬ 
pel of St. Matthew in the Hebrew language; 
and to have suffered martyrdom. The 
ancient church had an apocryphal gospel 
bearing his name, of which nothing has 
been preserved. A festival is held to his 
memory on 24th August. 

Bartholomew, St., an island, one of the 
West Indies, in the Leeward group, belong¬ 
ing to France, being transferred by Sweden 
in 1878, about 24 miles in circumference. 
It produces some tobacco, sugar, cotton, in¬ 
digo, &c. Pop. 2374. The only town is 
Gustavia. 

Bartholomew Fair, a celebrated fair, 
established in the reign of Henry I., for¬ 
merly held in West Smithfield, London, on 
St. Bartholomew’s Day (Aug. 24, o.s.), but 
abolished since 1855. 

Bartholomew’s Day, St., a feast of the 
Church of Rome, celebrated (August 24) in 
honour of St. Bartholomew. What is known 
as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was 
the slaughter of the French Protestants, 
which began on 24th August, 1572, by secret 
orders from Charles IX., at the instigation 
of his mother, Catharine de Medici, and in 
which, according to Sully, 70,000 Hugue¬ 
nots, including women and children, were 
murdered throughout the country. During 
the minority of Charles and the regency of 
,his mother a long war raged in France 
f between the Catholics and Huguenots, the 
\ ;aders of the latter being the Prince of 
Cond6 and Admiral Coligny. In 1570 
overtures were made by the court to the 
Huguenots, which resulted in a treaty of 
peace. This treaty blinded the chiefs of 
the Huguenots, particularly the Admiral 
Coligny, who was wearied with civil war. 
The king appeared to have entirely disen¬ 


gaged himself from the influence of the 
Guises and his mother ; he invited Coligny 
to his court, and honoured him as a father. 
The most artful means were employed to 
increase this delusion. The sister of the 
king was married to the Prince de Bearn 
(Aug. 18, 1572) in order to allure the most 
distinguished Huguenots to Paris. On Aug. 
22 a shot from a window wounded the 
admiral. The king hastened to visit him, 
and swore to punish the author of the vil¬ 
lainy; but on the same day he was induced 
by his mother to believe that the admiral 
had designs on his life. ‘God's death!’ 
he exclaimed; ‘kill the admiral; and not 
only him, but all the Huguenots; let none 
remain to disturb us.’ The following night 
Catharine held the bloody council, which 
fixed the execution for the night of St. 
Bartholomew, August 24, 1572. After 
the assassination of Coligny a bell from the 
tower of the royal palace at midnight gave 
to the assembled companies of burghers 
the signal for the general massacre of the 
Huguenots. The Prince of Conde and the 
King of Navarre saved their lives by going 
to mass and pretending to embrace the 
Catholic religion. By the king’s orders the 
massacre was extended throughout the whole 
kingdom; and the horrible slaughter con¬ 
tinued for thirty days in almost all the pro¬ 
vinces. 

Bartholomew’s Hospital, St., one of the 
great hospitals of London, formerly the 
priory of St. Bartholo¬ 
mew, and made an hos¬ 
pital by Henry VIII. 
in 1547. On an aver¬ 
age 6000 patients are 
annually admitted to 
the hospital,while about 
100,000 out-patients are 
relieved by it. A medi¬ 
cal school is attached 
to it. 

Bar'tizan, a small 
overhanging turret 
pierced with one or 
more apertures for 
archers, projecting gen¬ 
erally from the angles 
on the top of a tower, 
or from the parapet, or elsewhere, as in a 
mediaeval castle. 

Bartlett, William Henry, an English 
artist, born 1809, died on a voyage from 
Malta to Marseilles 1854. He travelled 
extensively abroad, and the illustrated works 

396 



> 






BAKTOLINI 

descriptive of the countries visited by him 
(Switzerland, the Bosphorus and the Danube, 
Syria and Palestine, Egypt, Canada, United 
States, &c.) obtained great success with the 
public, the engravings being from sketches 
by his own pencil. 

Bartolini (bar-to-le'ne), Lorenzo, a 
celebrated Italian sculptor, born at Flo¬ 
rence about 1778, died 1850. He studied 
and worked in Paris, and was patronized 
by Napoleon. On the fall of the empire he 
returned to Florence, where he continued to 
exercise his profession. Among his greater 
works may be mentioned his groups of 
Charity, and Hercules and Lycas, a colossal 
bust of Napoleon, and the beautiful monu¬ 
ment in the cathedral of Lausanne, erected 
in memory of Lady Stratford Canning. 
Bartolini ranks next to Canova among 
modern Italian sculptors. 

Bartolommeo (-rna/o), Fra. See 
Baccio della Porta. 

Bartolozzi (-lot'se), Francesco, a distin¬ 
guished engraver, born at Florence in 1725, 
or, according to others, in 1730, died at 
Lisbon 1813. In Venice, in Florence, and 
Milan he etched several pieces on sacred 
subjects, and then went to London, where 
he received great encouragement. After 
forty years’ residence in London he went to 
Lisbon on the invitation of the Prince Regent 
of Portugal to take the superintendence of 
a school of engravers, and remained there 
till his death. 

Bar'ton, Andrew, one of Scotland's first 
great naval commanders; flourished during 
the reign of James IV., and belonged to a 
family which for two generations had pro¬ 
duced able and successful seamen. In 1497 
he commanded the escort which accompanied 
Perkin Warbeck from Scotland. After doing 
considerable damage to English shipping he 
was killed in an engagement with two ships 
which had been specially fitted out against 
him (1512). 

Barton, Bernard, known as the Quaker 
poet, born in London 1784, died 1849. In 
1806 he removed to Woodbridge, in Suffolk, 
where he was long clerk in a bank. He 
published Metrical Effusions (1812); Poems 
by an Amateur (1818); Poems (1820); Napo¬ 
leon, and other Poems (1822); Poetic Vigils 
(1824); Devotional Verses (1826); A New- 
year’s Eve, and other Poems (1828); besides 
many contributions to the annuals and maga¬ 
zines. His poetry, though deficient in force, 
is pleasing, fluent, and graceful. 

Barton, Elizabeth, a country girl of Al- 

397 


— BARYTA. 

dington, in Kent (commonly called the Holy 
Maid of Kent), who gained some notoriety 
in the reign of Henry VIII. She was sub¬ 
ject to epileptic fits, and was persuaded by 
certain priests that she was a prophetess 
inspired by God. Among other things she 
px-opliesied that Henry, if lie persisted in 
his purpose of divoi'ce and second marriage, 
would not be king for seven months longer, 
and would die a shameful death, and be 
succeeded by Cathei-ine’s daughter. On ar¬ 
rest the imposture was confessed, and Barton 
and six othei's were executed May 5, 1534. 

Barton-upon-Humber, a town of England, 
in Lincolnshire, on the Humber. It con¬ 
tains two old churches, one of which is an 
undoubted specimen of Anglo-Saxon archi¬ 
tecture. Pop. 1891, 5226. 

Bartsch (barch), Karl Friedrich, a 
German scholar, born in 1832, died in 1888, 
whose labours have been of immense service 
in elucidating the older literature and lan¬ 
guage of his native country as well as in 
the field of the Romance tongues. Among 
his publications were editions of the Nibe- 
lungenlied, Walther Von der Vogelweide, 
Kudrun, &c.; Chrestomathie de l’ancien 
Fran^ais; Proven§alisches Lesebuch; trans¬ 
lations of Burns, of Dante, &c. 

Baru (ba-i*o'), a woolly substance used 
for caulking ships, stuffing cushions, &c., 
found at the base of the leaves of an East 
India sago palm. 

Baruch (ba/ruk; literally ‘blessed’), a 
Hebrew scribe, friend and assistant to the 
prophet Jeremiah. At the captivity, after 
the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah and 
Baruch were permitted to remain in Pales¬ 
tine, but were afterwards carried into Egypt, 
B.c. 588. His subsequent life is unknown. 
One of the apocryphal books bears the name 
of Baruch. The Council of Trent gave it a 
place in the canon, but its authenticity was 
not admitted either by the ancient Jews or 
the eai'ly Christian fathers. 

Barwood, a dye wood obtained from 
Pterocarpus anyolensis, a tall tree of West 
Africa. It is chiefly used for giving orange- 
red dyes on cotton yarns. See Camwood. 

Bary'ta, oxide of barium, called also 
heavy earth , from its being the heaviest of 
the earths, its specific gravity being 47. 
It is generally found in ’combination with 
sulphuric and carbonic acids,forming sulphate 
and carbonate of baryta, the former of which 
is called heavy-spar. Baryta is a gray 
powder, has a sharp, caustic, alkaline taste, 
and a strong affinity for water, and forms a 


BASALT-BASE-BALL. 


hydrate with that element. It forms white 
salts with the acids, all of which are poison¬ 
ous except the sulphate. Sevei’al mixtures 
of sulphate of baryta and white-lead are 
manufactured, and are 
used as white pigments, 
or it may be used alone. 

Carbonate of baryta, 
which in the natural state 
is known as witherite, is 
also used as the base of 
certain colours. The ni¬ 
trate is used in pyro- 
techny, in the preparation 
of green fireworks. 

Basalt (ba-salt'),a well- 
known igneous rock oc¬ 
curring in the ancient trap 
and the recent volcanic series of rocks, but 
most abundantly in the former. It is a 
fine-grained heavy crystalline rock, consist¬ 
ing of felspar, augite, and magnetic iron, and 
sometimes contains a little olivine. Basalt 



Basalt—Lot’s Wife, St. Helena. 


is amorphous, columnar, tabular,or globular. 
The columnar form is straight or curved, 
perpendicular or inclined, sometimes nearly 
horizontal; the diameter of the columns 


from 3 to 18 inches, sometimes with trans¬ 
verse semispherical joints, in which the con¬ 
vex part of one is inserted in the concavity of 
another; and the height from 5 feet to 150. 
The forms of the columns generally are 
pentagonal, hexagonal, or octagonal. When 
decomposed it is found also in round masses, 
either spherical or compressed and lenti¬ 
cular. These rounded masses are sometimes 
composed of concentric layers, with a nu¬ 
cleus, and sometimes of prisms radiating 
from a centre. Fingal’s Cave, in the island 
of Staffa, furnishes a remarkable instance 
of basaltic columns. The pillars of the 
Giant’s Causeway, Ireland, composed of 
this stone, and exposed to the roughest sea 
for ages, have their angles as perfect as 
those at a distance from the waves. Basalt 
often assumes curious and fantastic forms, 
as for example those masses popularly known 
as ‘ Sampson’s Bibs ’ at Arthur s Seat, Edin¬ 
burgh, and ‘Lot’ and ‘Lot’s Wife’ near the 
s. coast of St. Helena. 

Baschi (bas'ke), Matteo, an Italian 
Minorite friar of the convent of Monte- 
falcone, founder and first general of the 
Capuchin branch of the Franciscans. He 
died at Venice, 1552. 

Bas'cinet, or Bas'net, a light helmet, 
sometimes with, but more frequently with¬ 
out a visor, in general use for English in¬ 
fantry in the reigns of Edward II. and III., 
and Bichard II. 

Base, in architecture, that part of a 
column which is between the top of the 
pedestal and the bottom of the shaft; where 
there is no pedestal, the part between the 
bottom of the column and the pavement. 
The term is also applied to the lower pro¬ 
jecting part of the wall of a room, consisting 
of a plinth and its mouldings. 

Base, in chemistry, a term applied to those 
compound substances which unite with acids 
to form salts. 

Base, or Basis, a term in tactics, signify¬ 
ing the original line on which an offensive 
army forms; the frontier of a country, a 
river, or any safe position from which an 
army takes the field to invade an enemy’s 
country; upon which it depends for its sup¬ 
plies, reinforcements, &c.; to which it sends 
back its sick and wounded; and upon which 
it would generally fall back in case of re¬ 
verse and retreat. 

Base-ball, a game played with a bat and 
ball which has obtained a sort of national 
character in the United States. It is very 
similar to the English game of ‘rounders,’ 

398 



































BASEDOW-BASEL. 


and is played by nine players a side. A 
diamond-shaped space of ground, 90 feet on 
the side, is marked out, the corners being 
the ‘bases.’ One side takes the field, and 
the other sends a man to bat. When the 
field side take their places the ‘ pitcher,’ 
standing inside the ground near the centre 
and in front of the batsman, delivers a ball 
to the batsman, who stands at the ‘ home 
base,’ and who tries to drive it out of the 


reach of the fielders, and far enough out of 
the field to enable him to run round the 
bases, which scores a run. If he cannot 
run round all he may stop at any one, and 
may be followed by another batsman. If 
he is touched by the ball he is out, and 
when three on his side are put out, the field 
side take the bat. Nine of these innings 
make a game, which the highest score wins. 
The bat is of a cylindrical shape, not more 



Basel, from above the Town. 


than 2^ inches in diameter nor more than 
42 inches long. The ball is about 9 inches 
in circumference and pretty elastic. 

Basedow (ba'ze-do), John Bernhard, 
German educationalist, born 1723, died 1790. 
Under the auspices of the Prince of Anhalt- 
Dessau he opened, in 1774, an educational 
institution which he called the Philan¬ 
thropic , a school free from sectarian bias, 
and in which the pupils were to be disci¬ 
plined in all studies—physical, intellectual, 
and moral. This school led to the establish¬ 
ment of many similar ones, though Basedow 
retired from it in 1778. The chief feature 
of Basedow’s system is the full development 
of the faculties of the young at which he 
aspired, in pursuance of the notions of Locke 
and Rousseau. 

Basel (ba'zl; Fr. Bale), a canton and 
city of Switzerland. The canton borders on 
Alsace and Baden, has an area of 176 sq. m. 
and a pop. of 124,372, nearly all speak¬ 

399 


ing German. It is divided into two half- 
cantons, Basel city (Basel-stadt) and Basel 
country (Basel-Landschaft). The former 
consists of the city and its precincts, the 
remainder of the canton forming Basel- 
Landschaft, the capital of which is Liestal. 
The city of Basel is 43 m. N. of Bern, and 
consists of two parts on opposite sides of the 
Rhine, and communicating by three bridges, 
one of them an ancient wooden structure; in 
the older portions is irregularly built with 
narrow streets; has an ancient cathedral, 
founded 1010, containing the tombs of 
Erasmus and other eminent persons; a 
university, founded in 1459; a seminary for 
missionaries; a museum containing the 
valuable public library, pictures, &c. The 
industries embrace silk ribbons (8000 hands 
employed), tanning, paper, aniline dyes, 
brewing, &c.; and the advantageous position 
of Basel, a little below where the Rhine 
becomes navigable and at the terminus of 























































BASEL-BASIL. 


the French and German railways, has made 
it the emporium of a most important trade. 
At Basel was signed the treaty of peace 
between France and Prussia, April 5, and 
that between France and Spain, July 22, 
1795. Pop. 61,399. 

Basel, Council of, a celebrated oecume¬ 
nical council of the church convoked by 
Pope Martin V. and his successor Eugenius 
IV. It was opened 14th Dec. 1431, under 
the presidency of the Cardinal Legate 
Juliano Cesarini of St. Angelo. The objects 
of its deliberations were to extirpate here¬ 
sies (that of the Hussites in particular), to 
unite all Christian nations under the Ca¬ 
tholic church, to put a stop to wars between 
Christian princes, and to reform the church. 
But its first steps towards a peaceable re¬ 
conciliation with the Hussites were dis¬ 
pleasing to the pope, who authorized the 
cardinal legate to dissolve the council. 
That body opposed the pretensions of the 
pope, and, notwithstanding his repeated 
orders to remove to Italy, continued its 
deliberations under the protection of the 
emperor Sigismund, of the German princes, 
and of France. On the pope continuing to 
issue bulls for its dissolution the council 
commenced a formal process against him, 
and cited him to appear at its bar. On his 
refusal to comply with this demand the 
council declared him guilty of contumacy, 
and, after Eugenius had opened a counter¬ 
synod at Ferrara, decreed his suspension 
from the papal chair (Jan. 24, 1438). The 
removal of Eugenius, however, seemed so 
impracticable, that some prelates, who till 
then had been the boldest and most influen¬ 
tial speakers in the council, including the 
Cardinal Legate Juliano, left Basel, and went 
over to the party of Eugenius. The Arch¬ 
bishop of Arles, Cardinal Louis Allemand, 
was now made first president of the council, 
and directed its proceedings with much 
vigour. In May, 1439, it declared Eugenius, 
on account of his disobedience of its decrees, 
a heretic, and formally deposed him. Ex¬ 
communicated by Eugenius, they proceeded, 
in a regular conclave, to elect the duke 
Amadeus of Savoy to the papal chair. 
Felix V.—the name he adopted—was ac¬ 
knowledged by only a few princes, cities, 
and universities. After this the moral power 
of the council declined; its last formal ses¬ 
sion was held May 16, 1443, though it was 
not technically dissolved till May 7, 1449, 
when it gave in its adhesion to Nicholas V., 
the successor of Eugenius. The decrees of 


the Council of Basel are admitted into none 
of the Homan collections, and are con¬ 
sidered of no authority by the Homan law¬ 
yers. They are regarded, however, as of 
authority in points of canon law in France 
and Germany, as their regulations for the 
reformation of the church have been adopted 
in the pragmatic sanctions of both countries, 
and, as far as they regard clerical discipline, 
have been actually enforced. 

Base-line, in surveying, a straight line 
measured with the utmost precision to form 
the starting-point of the triangulation of a 
country or district. See also Base. 

Ba'shan, the name in Scripture for a 
singularly rich tract of country lying beyond 
the Jordan between Mount Hermon and 
the land of Gilead. At the time of the 
Exodus it was inhabited by Amorites, who 
were overpowered by the Israelites, and the 
land assigned to the half-tribe of Manasseh. 
The district was, and yet is, famous for its 
oak forests and its cattle. Remains of 
ancient cities are common. 

Bashaw, Basha, an obsolete form of 
Pasha. 

Bashee' Islands, a group of islands in 
the Chinese Sea between Luzon and For¬ 
mosa, Ion. 122° E.; lat. 20° 28' to 20° 55' N. 
They were discovered by Dam pier in 1687, 
and belong to Spain. The largest island is 
Batan, with a population of 8000. 

Bashi-Bazooks', irregular troops in the 
Turkish army. They are mostly Asiatics, 
and have had to be disarmed several times 
by the regular troops on account of the 
barbarities by which they have rendered 
themselves infamous. 

Bash'kirs, a tribe of Finnish or of Ta¬ 
tar origin, inhabiting the Russian govern¬ 
ments of TTfa, Orenburg, Perm, and Samara. 
They formerly roamed about under their 
own princes in Southern Siberia, but in 
1556 they voluntarily placed themselves 
under the Russian sceptre. They are 
nominally Mohammedans, and live by 
bunting, cattle-rearing, breeding of cattle 
and horses, and keeping of bees. They are 
rude and warlike and partially nomadic. 
They number about 750,000. 

Basic Slag, the slag or refuse matter 
which is got in making basic steel, and which 
from the phosphate of lime it contains is a 
valuable fertilizer. 

Basic Steel. See Steel. 

Basil, the name of two emperors. See 
Basilius. 

Bas'il, a labiate plant, Ocymum Basilicum, 
400 


BASIL-BASILIUS I. 


a native of India, much used in cookery, 
especially in France, and known more 
particularly as sweet or common basil. 
Bush or lesser basil is 0. minimum; wild 
basil belongs to a different genus, being the 
Calamintha Clinopodium. 

Basil, St., called the Great, one of the 
Greek fathers, was born in 329, and made 
in 370 Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, 
where he died in 379. He was dis¬ 
tinguished by his efforts for the regulation 
of clerical discipline, and above all, his 
endeavours for the promotion of monastic 
life. The Greek Church honours him as 
one of its most illustrious saints, and cele¬ 
brates his festival January 1. The vows 
of obedience, chastity, and poverty framed 
by St. Basil are essentially the rules of all 
the orders of Christendom, although he is 
particularly the father of the eastern, as 
St. Benedict is the patriarch of the western 
orders. 

Basilan', the principal island of the Sulu 
Archipelago, now belonging to the Philip¬ 
pines, off the s.w. extremity of Mindanao, 
from which it is separated by the Strait of 
Basilan. It is about 42 m. in length by 6 
average breadth. Pop. about 5000. 

Basile'an Manuscripts, two manuscripts 
of the Greek New Testament now in the 
library of Basel. (1) A nearly complete 
uncial copy of the Gospels of the eighth cen¬ 
tury; (2) a cursive copy of the whole New 
Testament except the Apocalypse, tenth 
century. 

Basil'ian Liturgy, that form for celebra¬ 
ting the Eucharist drawn up towards the 
close of the fourth century by Basil the 
Great, still used in the Greek Church. 

Basilian Monks, monks who strictly fol¬ 
low the rules of St. Basil, chiefly belonging 
to the Greek Church. 

Basil'ica, originally the name applied by 
the Romans to their public halls, either of 
justice, of exchange, or other business. The 
plan of the basilica was usually a rectangle 
divided into aisles by rows of columns, the 
middle aisle being the widest, with a semi¬ 
circular apse at the end, in which the 
tribunal was placed. The ground-plan of 
these buildings was generally followed in 
the early Christian churches, which, there¬ 
fore, long retained the name of basilica, 
and it is still applied to some of the churches 
in Rome by way of distinction, and some¬ 
times to other churches built in imitation 
of the Roman basilicas. 

Basilica'ta, also called Potenza, an 
VOL. i. 401 


Italian province, extending north from the 
Gulf of Taranto, and corresponding pretty 
closely with the ancient Lucania. Area, 
4122 sq. m.; pop. 524,485. 

Basil'icon, a name of several ointments, 
the chief ingredients of which are wax, pitch, 
resin, and olive-oil. 

Basil'icon Do'ron (the royal gift), the 
title of a book written bv King James I. in 
1599, containing a collection of precepts of 
the ait of government. It maintains the 
claim of the king to be sole head of the 
church. Printed at Edinburgh, 1603. 

Basil'ides (-dez), an Alexandrian Gnos¬ 
tic who lived under the reigns of Trajan, 
Adrian, and Antoninus, but the place of 
his birth is unknown He was well ac¬ 
quainted with Christianity, but mixed it 
up with the wildest dreams of the Gnostics, 
peopling the earth and the air with multi¬ 
tudes of ceons. His disciples (Basilidians) 
were numerous in Syria, Egypt, Italy, and 
Gaul, but they are scarcely heard of after 
the fourth century. 

Bas'ilisk, a fabulous creature formerly 
believed to exist, and variously regarded as 
a kind of serpent, lizard, or dragon, and 
sometimes identified with the cockatrice. 
It inhabited the deserts of Africa, and its 
breath and even its look was fatal. The 
name is now applied to a genus of saurian 
reptiles ( Basiliscus ), belonging to the family 
Iguanidae, distinguished by an elevated crest 
or row of scales, ei’ectible at pleasure, which, 
like the dorsal fins of some fishes, runs along 
the whole length of the back and tail. The 
mitred or hooded basilisk (B. mitratus ) is 
especially remarkable for a membranous bag 
at the back of the head, of the size of a small 
hen’s egg, which can be inflated with air at 
pleasure. The other species have such hoods 
also, but of a less size. To this organ they 
owe their name, which recalls the basilisk 
of fable, though in reality they are exceed¬ 
ingly harmless and lively creatures. The 
B. amboinensis is a native of the Indian 
Archipelago, where it is much used for food. 
It frequents trees overhanging water, into 
which it drops when alarmed. 

Basil'ius I., a Macedonian, Emperor of 
the East, born a.d. 820, died 886. He was 
of obscure origin, but having succeeded in 
gaining the favour of the Emperor Michael 
III. he became his colleague in the empire 

866. After the assassination of Michael, 

867, Basilius became emperor. Though he 
had worked his way to the throne by a 
series of crimes, he proved an able and equit- 



BASILIUS II. 


BASS. 


able sovereign. The versatility, if not the 
depth of his intellect, is strikingly displayed 
in his Exhortations to his Son Leo, which 
are still extant. 

Basilius II., Emperor of the East, born 
958, died 1025. On the death of his father, 
the Emperor Romanus the Younger, in 
963, he was kept out of the succession for 
twelve years by two usurpers. He began to 
reign in conjunction with his brother Con¬ 
stantine 975. His reign was almost a con¬ 
tinued scene of warfare, his most important 
struggle being that which resulted in the 
conquest of Bulgaria, 1018. 

Ba'sin, in physical geography, the whole 
tract of country drained by a river and its 
tributaries. The line dividing one river 
basin from another is the water-shed, and 
by tracing the various water-sheds we divide 
each country into its constituent basins 
The basin of a loch or sea consists of the 
basins of all the rivers which run into it.— 
In geology a basin is any dipping or dispo¬ 
sition of strata towards a common axis or 
centre, due to upheaval and subsidence. It 
is sometimes used almost synonymously with 
‘formation’ to express the deposits lying 
in a certain cavity or depression in older 
rocks. The ‘Paris basin’ and ‘London 
basin ’ are familiar instances. 

Ba'singstoke, a town of England, county 
of Hants, 18 miles N.n.e. from Winchester. 
It has a good trade in corn, malt, &c., and 
now gives name to one of the pari, divisions 
of the county. Pop. 1891, 7960. 

Bas'kerville, John, celebrated English 
printer and type-founder, born in 1706, died 
1775. He settled at Birmingham as a 
writing-master, subsequently engaged in 
the manufacture of japanned works, and in 
1750 commenced printer. Prom his press 
came highly-prized editions of ancient and 
modern classics, Bibles, prayer-books, &c., 
all beautifully-printed works. 

Basket, a vessel or utensil of wicker¬ 
work, made of interwoven osiers or willows, 
rushes, twigs, grasses, &c. The process of 
basket-making is very simple, and appears 
to be well known among the very rudest 
peoples. The ancient Britons excelled in 
the art, and their baskets were highly prized 
in Rome. 

Basking-shark (Seldche maxima or 
Cetorhinus maximus ), a species of shark, so 
named from its habit of basking in the sun 
at the surface of the water. It reaches the 
length of 40 feet, and its liver yields a large 
quantity of oil, It frequents the northern 


seas, and is known also as the sail-fish or 
sun-fish. 

Basle. See Basel. 

Basoche. See Bazoche. 

Basques (basks), or Biscayans (in their 
own language, Euscaldunac), a remarkable 
race of people dwelling partly in the south¬ 
west corner of Prance, but mostly in the 
north of Spain adjacent to the Pyrenees. 
They are probably descendants of the 
ancient Iberi, who occupied Spain before 
the Celts. They preserve their ancient 
language, former manners, and national 
dances, and make admirable soldiers, espe¬ 
cially in guerrilla warfare. Their lan¬ 
guage is highly polysynthetic, and no con¬ 
nection between it and any other lan¬ 
guage has as yet been made out. There 
are four principal dialects, which are not 
only distinguished by their pronunciation 
and grammatical structure, but differ even 
in their vocabularies. The Basques, who 
number about 600,000, occupy in Spain the 
provinces of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Al&va; 
in France parts of the departments of the 
Upper and Lower Pyrenees, Allege, and 
Upper Garonne. 

Basra. See Bassova. 

Bas-relief (ba're-lef or bas're-lef), Bass- 
relief, low-relief, a mode of sculpturing 
figures on a flat surface, the figures having a 



very slight relief or projection from the sur¬ 
face. It is distinguished from haut-relief 
( alto-rilievo ), or high-relief, in which the 
figures stand sometimes almost entirely 
free from the ground. Bas-relief work has 
been described as ‘ sculptured painting ’ 
from the capability of disposing of groups 
of figures and exhibiting minor adjuncts, as 
in a painting. 

Bass (bas; from the Italian basso , deep, 
402 










BASS-BASSES-PYRENEES. 


low), in music, the lowest partin the harmony 
of a musical composition, whether vocal or 
instrumental. According to someitisthefun¬ 
damental or most important part, while others 
regard the melody or highest part in that 
light. Next to the melody, the bass part 
is the most striking, the freest and boldest 
in its movements, and richest in effect.— 
Figured bass , a bass part having the accom¬ 
panying chords suggested by certain figures 
written above or below the notes—the most 
successful system of short-hand scoring at 
present in use among organists and pianists. 
—Fundamental bass, the lowest note or 
root of a chord; a bass consisting of a suc¬ 
cession of fundamental notes. — Thorough 
bass, the mode or art of expressing chords 
by means of figures placed over or under 
a given bass. Figures written over each 
other indicate that the notes they repre¬ 
sent are to be sounded simultaneously, 
those standing close after each other that 
they are to be sounded successively. The 
common chord in its fundamental form is 
generally left unfigured, and accidentals are 
indicated by using sharps, naturals, or flats 
along with the figures. 

Bass (bas), the name of a number of fishes 
of several genera, but originally belonging 
to a genus of sea-fishes (Labrax) of the 
perch family, distinguished from the true 
perches by having the tongue covered by 
small teeth and the preoperculum smooth. 
L. lupus, the only British species, called also 
sea-dace, and from its voracity sea-wolf, re¬ 
sembles somewhat the salmon in shape, and 
is much esteemed for the table, weighing 
about 15 lbs. L. linedtus (Roccus linedtus ), 
or striped bass, an American species, weigh¬ 
ing from 25 to BO lbs., is much used for 
food, and is also known as rock-fish. Both 
species occasionally ascend rivers, and at¬ 
tempts have been made to cultivate British 
bass in fresh-water ponds with success. 
Two species of black bass (Micropterus sal- 
moides and M. dolomieu), American fresh¬ 
water fishes, are excellent as food and give 
fine sport to the angler. The former is often 
called the large-mouthed black bass, from 
the size of its mouth. Both make nests and 
take great care of their eggs and young. 
The Centropristis nigricans, an American 
sea-fish of the perch family, and weighing 2 
to 3 lbs., is known as the sea-bass. 

Bass (bas), The, a remarkableinsulartrap- 
rock, at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, 3 
miles from North Berwick, of a circular 
form, about 1 mile in circumference, rising 

403 


majestically out of the sea to a height of 
313 feet. It pastures a few sheep, and is a 
great breeding-place of solan-geese. During 
the persecution of the Covenanters its castle, 
long since demolished, was used as a state 
prison,in which several eminent Covenanters 
were confined. It was held from 1691 to 
1694 with great courage and pertinacity 
by twenty Jacobites, who in the end capitu¬ 
lated on highly honourable terms. 

Bass, bee Basswood. 

Bassa'no, a commercial city of North 
Italy, province of Vicenza, on the Brenta, 
over which is a covered wooden bridge. 
It has lofty old walls and an old castle, 
and has various industries and an active 
trade. Near Bassano, September 8, 1796, 
Bonaparte defeated the Austrian general 
Wurmser. Pop. 14,524. 

Bassa'no (from his birthplace; real name 
Giacomo da Ponte), an Italian painter, 
born 1510, died 1592. He painted his¬ 
torical pieces, landscapes, flowers, <fcc., and 
also portraits; and left four sons, who all 
became painters, Francesco being the most 
distinguished. 

Bas'saris, a genus of N. American carni¬ 
vora representing the civets of the old world. 

Bassein (bas-san'), a town in Lower 
Burmah, province of Pegu, on both banks 
of the Bassein river, one of the mouths of 
the Irrawaddy, and navigable for the largest 
ships. It has considerable trade, exporting 
large quantities of rice, and importing coal, 
salt, cottons, &c. Pop. 28,147.—Bassein 
District has an area of 7047 sq. m. and a 
pop. of 389,419. 

Bassein (bas-san'), a decayed town in 
Hindustan, 28 miles north from Bombay. 
At the beginning of the eighteenth century it 
was a fine and wealthy city, with over 60,000 
inhabitants; in 1881 it had only 10,357. 

Basselin (bas-lan), Olivier, an old French 
poet or song-writer, born in the Val-de-Vire, 
Normandy, about the middle of the four¬ 
teenth century, died 1418 or 1419. His 
sprightly songs have given origin and name 
to the modern Vaudevilles. 

Basselisse Tapestry, a kind of tapeatry 
wrought with a horizontal warp. Bee 
Hautelisse. 

Basses-Alpes (bas-alp; ‘Lower Alps’), a 
department of France, on the Italian border. 
See Alpes. 

Basses-Pyrenees (bas-pe-ra-na; ‘Lower 
Pyrenees’), a French department, bordering 
on Spain and the Bay of Biscay. See 

Pyrenees. 


BASSET-BAST. 


Bass'et, the name of a game at cards, 
formerly much played, especially in France. 
It is very similar to the modern faro. 

Basseterre (biis-tar), two towns in the 
West Indies.—1. Capital of the island of 
St. Christopher’s, at the mouth of a small 
river, on the south side of the island. Trade 
considerable. Pop. about 9000. — 2. The 
capital of the island of Guadaloupe. It has 
no harbour, and the anchorage is unsheltered 
and exposed to a constant swell. Pop. 
8790. 

Basset-horn, a musical instrument, now 
practically obsolete, a sort of clarinet of 
enlarged dimensions, with a curved and 
bell-shaped metal end. The compass ex¬ 
tends from F below the bass-staff to C on 
the second ledger-line above the treble. 
Mozart has several pieces wx-itten for the 
basset-horn. 

Bassetlaw, a pari, division of the county 
of Nottingham. 

Bass'ia, a genus of tropical trees found 
in the East Indies and Africa, nat. order 
Sapotaceae. One species (B. Parlcii) is sup¬ 
posed to be the shea-tree of Park, the fruit 
of which yields a kind of butter that is 
highly valued, and forms an important 
article of commerce in the intei’ior of 
Africa. There are several other species, of 
which B. longifolia, or Indian oil-tree, and 
B. butyrdcea, or Indian butter-tree, are 
well-known examples, yielding a large 
quantity of oleaginous or butyraceous 
matter. The wood is as hard and incornip- 
tible as teak. 

Bassompierre (ba-son-pyar), Francois 
de, Marshal of France, distinguished both 
as a soldier and a statesman; born 1579, 
died 1646. In 1602 he made his first cam¬ 
paign against the Duke of Savoy, and he 
fought with equal distinction in the following 
year in the imperial army against the Turks. 
In 1622 Louis XIII. appointed him Mar¬ 
shal of France, and became so much at¬ 
tached to him that Luynes, the declared 
favourite, sent him on embassies to Spain, 
Switzexdand, and England. After his re¬ 
turn he became an object of suspicion to 
Cardinal Richelieu, and was sent to the 
Bastille in 1631, from which he was not re¬ 
leased till 1643, after the death of the car¬ 
dinal. During his detention he occupied 
himself with writing his memoirs, which 
shed much light on the events of that time. 

Bassoon', a musical wind-instrument of 
the reed order, blown "with a bent metal 
mouthpiece, and holed and keyed like the 


clarinet. Its compass comprehends three 
octaves rising from B flat below the bass- 
staff. Its diameter at bottom is 3 inches, 
and for convenience of carriage it is divided 
into two or more parts, whence 
its Italian name fagotto , a 
bundle. It serves for the bass 
among wood wind-instruments, 
as hautboys, flutes, &c. 

Bass'ora, or Basrah, a city 
in Asiatic Turkey, on the w r est 
bank of the Shat-el-Arab (the 
united stream of the Tigris and 
Euphrates), about 50 miles from 
its mouth, and nearly 300 south¬ 
east of Bagdad It is surrounded 
by a w’all about 10 miles in cir¬ 
cuit, from 20 to 25 feet thick, 
but much of the area inclosed 
is occupied by gardens, &c. The 
houses are generally mean, 
considerable transit trade is car¬ 
ried on here between theTurkish 
and Persian dominions and 
India, and since communication Bassoon, 
by steamer has been established 
with Bagdad and Bombay the prosperity of 
the town has greatly increased. The chief 
exports are dates, camels and horses, wool 
and wheat; imports coffee, indigo, rice, 
tissues, &c. Thirty years ago the inhabi¬ 
tants were estimated at 5000; they are now 
about 40,000; in the middle of last century 
they were said to number 150,000. The 
recent substitution of date and wheat culti¬ 
vation for that of rice has l’endered the place 
much more healthy. The ruins of the an¬ 
cient and moi’e famous Bassora—founded 
by Caliph Omar in 636, at one time a centre 
of Arabic literature and learning and re- 
garded as ‘ the Athens of the East ’—lie 
about 9 miles south-west of the modern town. 

Bassora Gum, an inferior kind of gum 
resembling gum-arabic. 

Basso-rilievo. See Bas-relief. 

Bass Rock. See Bass. 

Bass Strait, a channel beset with islands, 
which separates Australia from Tasmania, 
120 miles broad, discovered by Geoi-ge Bass, 
a surgeon in the royal navy, in 1798. 

Basswood, Bass, the American lime-tree 
or linden (Tilxa americdna), a tree common 
in N. America, yielding a light, soft timber. 

Bast, the inner bark of exogenous trees, 
especially of the lime or linden, consisting 
of several layers of fibres. The manufac¬ 
ture of bast into mats, ropes, shoes, &c., ia 
in some districts of Russia a coixsiderable 

404 













BASTAR — 

branch of industry, bast mats, used for 
packing furniture, covering plants in gar¬ 
dens, &c., being exported in large quantities. 
Though the term is usually restricted, many 
of the most important fibres of commerce, 
such as hemp, flax, jute, &c., are the pro¬ 
ducts of bast or liber. 

Bastar', a feudatory state in Upper 
Godavari district, Central Provinces of 
India; area, 13,062 sq. m.; pop. 196,248. 
Chief town, Jagdalpur; pop. 4294. 

Bas'tard, a child begotten and born out 
of wedlock; an illegitimate child. By the 
civil and canon laws, and by the law of 
Scotland (as well as of some of the United 
States), a bastard becomes legitimate by 
the intermarriage of the parents at any 
future time. But by the laws of England 
a child, to be legitimate, must at least 
be born after the lawful marriage; it does 
not require that the child shall be begotten 
in wedlock, but it is indispensable that it 
should be born after marriage, no matter 
how short the time, the law presuming it to 
be the child of the husband. The only in¬ 
capacity of a bastard is that he cannot be 
heir or next of kin to any one save his own 
issue. In England the maintenance of a 
bastard in the first instance devolves on the 
mother, while in Scotland it is a joint 
burden upon both parents. 

The mother is entitled to 
the custody of the child in 
preference to the father. 

Bastard Bar, more cor¬ 
rectly baton sinister , the her¬ 
aldic mark used to indicate 
illegitimate descent. It is a Bastard Bar. 
diminutive of the bend sin¬ 
ister, of which it is one-fourth in width, 
couped or cut short at the ends, so as not to 
touch the corners of the shield. 

Bastard Cedar. See Cedrela. 

Bastard Saffron. See Saffloiver. 

Bastia (bas-te'a), the former capital of 
the island of Corsica, upon the n.e. coast, 
75 miles N.e. of Ajaccio, on a hill slope; 
badly built, with narrow streets, a strong- 
citadel, and an indifferent harbour; with 
some manufactures, a considerable trade in 
hides, soap, wine, oil, pulse, &c. Pop. 20,100. 

Bas'tian, Adolf, Gorman, traveller and 
ethnologist, born m travels have 

embraced various - pa^fce of 1 ur-Ue, Uie U. 
States, Mexico, Peru, Australia and New 
Zealand, Southern and' Western Africa, 
Egypt, Arabia, India, South-eastern Asia, 
the Asiatic Archipelago, Japan, China, Mon- 

405 


BASTILLE. 

golia, Siberia, &c. His numerous writings 
throw light on almost every subject con¬ 
nected with ethnology or anthropology, as 
well as psychology, linguistics, non-Christian 
religions, geography, &c. One of his chief 
works is Die Yolker des ostlichen Asien 
(Peoples of Eastern Asia; 6 vols., 1866-71). 

Bas'tian, Henry Charlton, English phy¬ 
sician and biologist, born at Truro in 1837. 
He was educated at Falmouth and at Uni¬ 
versity College, London, where he was assis¬ 
tant-curator in the museum in 1860-63. He 
obtained the degree of M.A. in 1861 from 
the University of London, graduating sub¬ 
sequently in medicine at the same univer¬ 
sity (M.B. 1863, M.D. 1866). In 1864-66 
he was a medical officer in Broadmoor 
Criminal Lunatic Asylum, and in the latter 
year was appointed lecturer on pathology 
and assistant-physician in St. Mary’s Hos¬ 
pital. In 1867 he became professor of 
pathological anatomy in University College, 
subsequently he was also professor of clini¬ 
cal medicine, and he has recently been ap¬ 
pointed to the chair of medicine and clinical 
medicine. Apart from numerous contribu¬ 
tions to medical and other pei'iodicals, and 
to Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, he has 
written The Modes of Origin of Lowest 
Organisms (1871); The Beginnings of Life 
(1872); Evolution and the Origin of Life 
(1874); Lectures on Paralysis from Brain 
Disease (1875); and The Brain as an Organ 
of Mind (1880), which has been tx-anslated 
into French and German. He has been an 
advocate for spontaneous generation. 

Bastiat (bas-te-a), Er^d^ric, French eco¬ 
nomist and advocate of free-trade, born at 
Bayonne 1801, died at Rome 1850. He 
became acquainted with Cobden and the 
English free-traders, whose speeches he 
translated into French. His chief works 
are: Sophismes Economiques (1846), Pro¬ 
priety et Loi, Justice et Fraternity (1848), 
Protectionisme et Communisme(1849), Har¬ 
monies Economiques (1849) translated into 
English (1860), &c. 

Bastille (bas-te!), a French name for any 
strong castle provided with towers, but as 
a proper name the state prison and citadel 
of Paris, which was built about 1370 by 
Charles V. It was ultimately used chiefly 
for the confinement of persons of rank who 
had fallen victims to the intrigues of the 
court or the caprice of the government. (See 
Cachet , Lettres de.) The capture of the 
Bastille by the Parisian mob, 14th July, 
1789, was the opening act of the revolution. 








BASTINADO-BASUTOLAND. 


On that date the Bastille was surrounded 
by a tumultuous mob, who first attempted 
to negotiate with the governor Delaunay, 
but when these negotiations failed, began 
to attack the fortress. For several hours 
the mob continued their siege without being 
able to effect anything more than an en¬ 
trance into the outer court of the Bastille; 
but at last the arrival of some of the lloyal 


Guard with a few pieces of artillery forced 
the governor to let down the second draw¬ 
bridge and admit the populace. The gov¬ 
ernor was seized, but on the way to the 
hotel de ville he was torn from his captors 
and put to death. 'The next day the de¬ 
struction of the Bastille commenced. Not 
a vestige of it exists, but its site is marked 
by a column in the Place de la Bastille. 



The Bastille, as in time of Louis XV. 


Bastinado, an eastern method of corpo¬ 
ral punishment, consisting of blows upon the 
soles of the feet, applied with a stick. 

Bas'tion, in fortification, a large mass of 
earth, faced with sods, brick, or stones, stand¬ 
ing out from a rampart, of which it is a prin¬ 
cipal part. A bastion consists of two flanks, 
each commanding and defending the adja¬ 
cent curtain, or that portion of the wall 
extending from one bastion to another, and 
two faces making with each other an acute 
angle called the salient angle, and command¬ 
ing the outworks and ground before the 
fortification. The distance between the two 
flanks is the gorge, or entrance into the 
bastion. The use of the bastion is to bring 
every point at the foot of the rampart as 
much as possible under the guns of the 
place. 

Bast 'wick, John, English physician and 
ecclesiastical controversialist, born in 1593, 
died 1654. He settled at Colchester, but 


instead of confining himself to his profes¬ 
sion, entered keenly into theological contro¬ 
versy, and was condemned by the Star 
Chamber for his books against Prelacy: 
Elenchus Religionis Papisticse, Flagellum 
Pontificis. and The Letanie of Dr. J. Bast- 
wick. With Prynne and Burton he was 
sentenced to lose his ears in the pillory, to 
pay a fine of £5000, and to be imprisoned 
for life. He was released by the Long Par¬ 
liament, and entered London in triumph 
along with Prynne and Burton. He ap¬ 
pears to have continued his controversies to 
the very last with the Independents and 
others. 

Basu'toland, a native province and Brit¬ 
ish South African possession, inclosed be¬ 
tween the Orange Free State, Natal, Griqua- 
land Eas£, and Cape Colony. The Basutos 
belong chiefly to the great stem of the 
Bechuanas, and have made greater advances 
in civilization than perhaps any other South 

406 







































































BATAVIA. 


BAT- 

African race. In 1866 the Basutos, who 
had lived under a semi-protectorate of the 
British since 1848, were proclaimed British 
subjects, their country placed under the 
government of an agent, and in 1871 it was 
joined to Cape Colony. In 1879 tbe at¬ 
tempted enforcement of an act passed for 
the disarm i ment of the native tribes caused 
a revolt under the chief Moirosi, which the 
Cape forces were unable to put down. When 
peace was restored Basutoland was disan- 
nexed fi*om Cape Colony (1884), and is now 
governed by a resident commissioner under 
the high commissioner for South Africa. 
Basutoland has an area of about 10,300 sq. 
miles, much of it covered with grass, and 
there is but little wood. The climate is 
pleasant. The natives keep cattle, sheep, 
and horses, cultivate the ground, and export 
grain. It is divided into four districts, 
each presided over by a magistrate. Pop. 
(Europ.), 469; (native), 127,707. 

Bat, one of the group of wing-handed, 
flying mammals, having the fore-limb pecu¬ 
liarly modifled so as to serve for flight, and 
constituting the order Cheiroptera. Bats 
are animals of the twilight and darkness, 
and are common in temperate and warm 
regions, but are most numerous and lar- 



Great Horse-shoe Bat (RhinolOphus Ferrumequlnum). 


gest in the tropics. All European bats are 
small, and have a mouse-like skin. The 
body of the largest British species, Vesper- 
tilio noctula, is less than that of a mouse, 
but its wings stretch about 15 inches. Dur¬ 
ing the day it remains in caverns, in the 
crevices of ruins, hollow trees, and such-like 
lurking-places, and flits out at evening in 
search of food, which consists of insects. 
Several species of the same genus are com¬ 
mon in North America. Many bats are 
remarkable for having a singular nasal cu¬ 
taneous appendage, bearing in some cases a 
fancied resemblance to a horse-shoe. Two 

407 


of these horse-shoe bats occur in Britain. 
Bats may be conveniently divided into two 
sections—the insectivorous or carnivorous, 
comprising all European and most African 
and American species; and the fruit-eating, 
belonging to tropical Asia and Australia, 
with several African forms. An Australian 
fruit-eating bat (Pterupus edulis), commonly 
known as the kalong or flying-fox, is the 
largest of all the bats; it does much mischief 
in orchards. At least two species of South 
American bats are known to suck the blood 
of other mammals, and thence are called 
‘ vampire-bats ’ (though this name has also 
been given to a species not guilty of this 
habit). The best known is the l)esmudus 
rufus of Brazil, Chili, &c. As winter ap¬ 
proaches, in cold climates bats seek shelter 
in caverns, vaults, ruinous and deserted 
buildings, and similar retreats, where they 
cling together in large clusters, hanging head 
downwards by the feet, and remain in a torpid 
condition until the returning spring recalls 
them to active exertions. Bats generally 
bring forth two young, which, while suck¬ 
ling, remain closely attached to the mother's 
teats, which are two, situated upon the chest. 
The parent shows a strong degree of attach¬ 
ment for her offspring, and, when they are 
captured, will follow them, and even submit 
to captivity herself rather than forsake her 
charge. 

Batalha (ba-tal'ya), a village in Portugal, 
69 miles north of Lisbon, with a renowned 
convent of Dominicans, a splendid building. 

Batan'gas, a town of the Philippines, in 
the island Luzon, capital of a province of 
same name, 58 miles 8. of Manilla. Pop. 
17,380. 

Bata'tas. See Sweet-potato. 

Bat'avi. See Batavians. 

Bata'via, a city and seaport of Java, on 
the north coast of the island, the capital of 
all the Dutch East Indies. It is situated on 
a wide, deep bay, the principal warehouses 
and offices of the Europeans, the Java Bank, 
the exchange, &c., being in the old town, 
which is built on a low, marshy plain near 
the sea, intersected with canals and very 
unhealthy; while the Europeans reside in a 
new and much healthier quarter. Batavia 
has a large trade, sugar being the chief 
export. It was founded by the Dutch in 
1619, and attained its greatest prosperity 
in the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
Its inhabitants are chiefly Malay, with a 
considerable admixture of Chinese and a 
small number of Europeans. Pop. 92,497. 



BATAVIAN REPUBLIC 


BATH. 




Batavia, a flourishing town of Western 
New York, 36 miles northeast of Buffalo 
by rail, has several saw mills and factories 
of sashes and blinds, plows and farming 
implements ; the seat of the State institu¬ 
tion for the blind. Population in 1890, 
7221. 

Batavians, an old Gei’man nation which 
inhabited a part of the present Holland, 
especially the island called Batavia , formed 
by that branch of the Rhine which empties 
itself into the sea near Leyden, together 
with the Waal and the Meuse. Tacitus 
asserts them to have been a branch of the 
Oatti. They were subdued by Germanicus, 
and were granted special privileges for their 
faithful services to the Romans, but revolted 
under Vespasian. They were, however, 
again subjected by Trajan and Adrian, and 
at the end of the third century the Salian 
Franks obtained possession of the island of 
Batavia. 

Batchian. See Bachian. 

Bath (bath), a city of England in Somerset¬ 
shire, on the Avon, which is navigable for 
barges from Bristol; is beautifully placed 
among the hills, and the houses are built of 
freestone, obtained from the neighbourhood. 
The Abbey Church ranks as one of the 
finest specimens of perpendicular Gothic 
architecture. Bath is remarkable for its 
medicinal waters, the four principal springs 
yielding no less than 184,000 gallons of 
water a day; and the baths are both elegant 
and commodious. The temperature of the 
springs varies from 109° to 117" Fahrenheit. 
They contain carbonic acid, chloride of so¬ 
dium and of magnesium, sulphate of soda, 
carbonate and sulphate of lime, &c. Bath 
was founded by the Romans, and called by 
them Aquce Bolts (Waters of the Sun). 
Amongst the Roman remains discovered 
here have been some fine baths. The height 
of its prosperity was reached, however, in 
the eighteenth century when Beau Nash 
was leader of the fashion and master of its 
ceremonies. Since then, though it still 
attracts large numbers of visitors, it has be¬ 
come the resort of valetudinarians chiefly. 
Jointly with Wells it is the head of a diocese, 
and returns two members to the House of 
Commons. Pop. of mun, bor. 51,843; pari, 
bor. 54,550. 

Bath, a town, United States, Maine, on * 
the west side and at the head of the winter 
navigation of the Kennebec, 12 miles from 
the sea. Chief industries: ship-building 
and allied crafts. Pop. 8723. 


Bath, the immersion of the body in water, 
or an apparatus for this purpose. The 
use of the bath as an institution apart from 
occasional immersion in rivers or the sea, is, 
as might be anticipated, an exceedingly old 
custom. Homer mentions the bath as one 
of the first refreshments offered to a guest; 
thus, when Ulysses enters the palace of 
Circe, a bath is prepared for him, and he is 
anointed after it with costly perfumes. No 
representation, however, of a bath as we 
understand it is given upon the Greek vases, 
bathers being represented either simply 
washing at an elevated basin, or having 
water poured over them from above. In 
later times, rooms, both public and private, 
were built expressly for bathing, the public 
baths of the Greeks being mostly connected 
with the gymnasia. Apparently, by an in¬ 
version of the later practice, it was custo¬ 
mary in the Homeric epoch to take first a 
cold and then a hot bath; but the Lacede¬ 
monians substituted the hot-air sudorific 
bath, as less enervating than warm water, 
and in Athens at the time of Demosthenes 
and Socrates the warm bath was considered 
by the more rigorous as an effeminate cus¬ 
tom. The fullest details we have with re¬ 
spect to the bathing of the ancients apply 
to its luxurious development under the Ro¬ 
mans. Their bathing establishments con¬ 
sisted of four main sections: the undressing 
room, with an adjoining chamber in which 
the bathers were anointed; a cold room with 
provision for a cold bath; a room heated 
moderately to serve as a preparation for the 
highest and lowest temperatures; and the 
sweating-room, at one extremity of which 
was a vapour-bath and at the other an ordi¬ 
nary hot bath. After going through the 
entire course both the Greeks and Romans 
made use of strigils or scrapers, either of 
horn or metal, to remove perspiration, oil, 
and impurities from the skin. Connected 
with the bath were walks, covered race- 
grounds, tennis-courts, and gardens, the 
whole, both in the external and internal 
decorations, being frequently on a palatial 
scale. The group of the Laocoon and the 
Farnese Hercules were both found in the 
ruins of Roman baths. With respect to mo¬ 
dern baths, that commonly in use in Rus¬ 
sia consists of a single hall, built of wood, 
in th^ midst of which is a powerful metal 
oven;-covered with heated stones, and sur¬ 
rounded with broad benches, on which the 
bathers take their places. Cold water is 
then poured upon the heated stones, and a 

408 



BATH. 


thick, hot steam rises, which causes the sweat 
to issue from the whole body. The bather 
is then gently whipped with wet birch rods, 
rubbed with soap, and washed with luke¬ 
warm and cold water; of the latter, some 
pailfuls are poured over his head; or else 
he leaps, immediately after this sweating- 
bath, into a river or pond, or rolls in the 
snow. The Turks, by their religion, are 
obliged to make repeated ablutions daily, 
and for this purpose there is, in every city, 
a public bath connected with a mosque. 
A favourite bath among them, however, is 
a modification of the hot-air sudorific- 
bath of the ancients introduced under the 
name of ‘ Turkish ’ into other than Moham¬ 
medan countries. A regular accompani¬ 
ment of this bath, when properly given, is 
the operation known as ‘ kneading,’ gener¬ 
ally performed at the close of the sweating 
process, after the final rubbing of the bather 
with soap, and consisting in a systematic 
pressing and squeezing of the whole body, 
stretching the limbs, and manipulating all 
the joints as well as the fleshy and muscu¬ 
lar parts. Public baths are now common 
in the United States. There are also 
numerous “hot springs’’ in nearly every 
section. Among the most famous are those 
at Hot Springs, in Garland eo., Arkansas, 
resorted to by invalids for the cure of 
rheumatism and similar complaints. There 
are from seventy-five to one hundred 
springs, varying in temperature from 105° 
to 160°, issuing from a lofty ridge of sand¬ 
stone overlooking the town, while others 
rise in the bed of the stream near by. 

The principal natural warm baths in 
England are at Bath and Bristol in Som¬ 
ersetshire, and Buxton and Matlock in 
Derbyshire. The baths of Harrogate, 
which are strongly impregnated with sul¬ 
phuretted hydrogen gas, are also of great 
repute for the cure of obstinate cutaneous 
diseases, indurations of the glands, &c. The 
most celebrated natural hot baths in Europe 
are those of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the vari¬ 
ous Baden in Germany; Toeplitz, in Bohe¬ 
mia; Bagnieres, Bardges, and Dax, in the 
south of France; and Spa, in Belgium. 
Besides the various kinds of water-bath 
with or without medication or natural mine¬ 
ral ingredients, there are also milk, oil, wine, 
earth, sand, mud, and electric baths, smoke- 
baths and gas-baths; but these are as a rule 
only indulged after specific prescription. 

The practice of bathing as a method of cure 
in cases of disease falls under the head of hy- 

409 


dropathy; but even when it is employed sim¬ 
ply for pleasure or purification due regard 
should be paid to the physiological condition 
of the bather. In many cases cold bathing 
should be avoided altogether, especially by 
those who have any tendency to spitting of 
blood or consumption, by gouty people, or by 
those who have any latent visceral disease or 
apoplectic tendency. Wherever the bath is 
followed by shivering instead of by a healthy 
reactionary glow, it is undesirable; and a 
cold bath in the morning after any debau¬ 
chery or excess in eating or drinking on the 
previous evening is exceedingly imprudent. 
Delicate persons and children ought not to 
bathe in the sea before tenor eleven o’clock 
in the morning, and in no case should bath¬ 
ing be indulged after a long fast. In cold 
streams and rivers additional precautions 
should be taken, the cold plunge, when 
heated or fatigued, being frequently attended 
with fatal results. Even warm baths are 
not wholly free from danger; apoplexy and 
death having been known to follow a hot 
bath when entered with a full stomach. 
As a rule the temperature should not ex¬ 
ceed 105°, and they should not be too long 
continued. Frequent indulgence in them 
has an enervating effect, though the major¬ 
ity of people need as yet no renewal of 
Hadrian’s prohibitive legislation in this 
matter. 

Bath, Knights of the, an order of Eng¬ 
land, supposed to have been instituted by 
Henry IV. on the day of his coronation, 
but allowed to lapse after the reign of 
Charles II. till 1725, when George I. re¬ 
vived it as a military order. By the book 
of statutes then prepared the number of 
knights was limited to the sovereign and 
thirty-seven knights companions; but the li¬ 
mits of the order were greatly extended in 
1815, and again in 1847, when it was opened 
to civilians. It now consists of three classes, 
each subdivided into (1) military members, 
(2), civil members, and (3), honorary mem¬ 
bers, consisting of foreign princes and officers. 
The first-class consists of Knights of the 
Grand Cross (G.C.B.); the second of Knights 
Commanders (K.C.B.); and the third of 
Companions (C.B.). The Dean of Westmin¬ 
ster is dean of the order. The ribbon of the 
order is crimson; the badge a gold cross of 
eight points, with the lion of England be¬ 
tween the four principal angles, arid having- 
in a circle in the centre the rose, thistle, and 
shamrock between three imperial crowns; 
motto: ‘Tria juncta in uno.’ Stars are 


bath-brick - 

worn by the two first classes, with the addi¬ 
tional motto, ‘ Ich dien.’ 

Bath-brick, a preparation of siliceous 
earth found in the river Parret in Somerset¬ 
shire, in the form of a solid brick, used for 
cleaning knives, &c. 

Bath'gate, a town, Scotland, county Lin¬ 
lithgow, having glass-works, a distillery, and 
several grain-mills, and in the vicinity the 
paraffin works known as Young’s, and coal 
and ironstone mines. Pop. 4885. 

Bathing. See Bath. 

Bathom'eter, an instrument for measur¬ 
ing the depth of sea beneath a vessel without 
casting a line. It is based upon the fact that 
the attraction exerted upon any given mass of 
matter on the ship is less when she is afloat 
than ashore because of the less density of 
sea-water as compared with that of earth 
or rock. 

Bathori (ba'to-re), a Hungarian family, 
which gave Transylvania five princes, and 
Poland one of its greatest kings. The more 
important members were: — 1 . Stephen, 
born in 1532, elected Prince of Transylvania 
in 1571, on the death of Zapolya, and in 
1575 king of Poland. He accomplished 
many internal reforms, recovered the Polish 
territories in possession of the Czar of Mus¬ 
covy, and reigned prosperously till his death 
in 1586.—2. Sigismund, nephew of Stephen, 
educated by the Jesuits, became waiwode 
or prince of Transylvania in 1581, shook off 
the Ottoman yoke, and had begun to give 
hopes of reigning gloriously when he re¬ 
signed his dominions to the emperor Ru¬ 
dolph II., in return for two principalities 
in Silesia, a cardinal’s hat, and a pension. 
Availing liimself, however, of an invitation 
by the Transylvanians, he returned, and 
placed himself under the protection of the 
Porte, but was defeated by the Imperial¬ 
ists in every battle, and finally sent to 
Prague, where he died almost forgotten in 
1613.—3. Elizabeth, niece of Stephen, king 
of Poland, and wife of Count Nadasdy, of 
Hungary. She is said to have bathed in the 
blood of 300 young girls in the hope of re¬ 
newing her youth, and to have committed 
other enormities. She was latterly seized 
and confined till her death in 1614. 

Bat-horse. See Batman. 

Ba thos, a Greek word meaning depth, 
now used to signify a ludicrous sinking 
from the elevated to the mean in writing or 
speech. First used in this sense by Pope. 

Bath-stone, a species of English lime¬ 
stone, also called Bath-oolite and roe-stone, 


- BATHYBIUS. 

from the small rounded grains of which it 
is composed. It is extensively worked near 
Bath for building purposes. When just 
quarried it is soft, but though it soon becomes 
hard on exposure to the atmosphere, and 
is of handsome appearance, it is not very 
durable. 

Bath'urst, a British settlement on the 
west coast of Africa, on the island of St. 
Mary’s, near the mouth of the Gambia, 
with a trade in gum, bees’-wax, hides, ivory, 
gold, rice, cotton, and palm-oil. Pop. 4537. 

Bathurst, a town in the western district 
of New South Wales, on the Macquarie 
river, with wide, w’ell-laid-out streets atj 
right angles, and a ceptral square, tanneries, 
railwa} 7 workshops, breweries, flour-mills,# 
and other industries. Pop. 7221. 

Bathurst, Allen Bathurst, Earl, a dis¬ 
tinguished statesman in Queen Anne’s reign; 
born 1684. He took part with Harley and 
St. John in opposing the influence of Marl¬ 
borough, was raised to the peerage in 1711, 
impeached the promoters of the South Sea 
scheme, opposed the bill against Atterbury, 
and was a leading antagonist of Walpole. 
He was created earl in 1772. His name is 
also associated with those of the leading 
writers and wits of the day. Died 1775. 

Bathurst, Henry Bathurst, Earl, son 
of the second earl, a prominent Tory states¬ 
man, after whom various capes, islands, and 
districts were named. Born 1762; in 1807, 
president of Board of Trade; in 1809, secre¬ 
tary for foreign affairs; and in 1812, secre¬ 
tary for the colonies, a post held by him 
for sixteen years. He was also president of 
the council under Wellington, 1828-30. 
Died 1S34. 

Bathurst Island, on the North Aus¬ 
tralian coast, belonging to S. Australia, sepa¬ 
rated from Melville Island by anarrow strait; 
triangular in shape, with a wooded area of 
about 1000 sq. miles.—Also an island in the 
Arctic Ocean discovered by Parry, E. of 
Cornwallis and w. of Melville Island, 76° N., 
100° w. 

Bathyb'ius (Gr. bathys, deep, bios, life), 
the name given by Huxley to what was 
regarded as masses of animal matter found 
covering the sea-bottom at great depths, 
and in such abundance as to form in some 
places deposits of 30 feet or more in thick¬ 
ness. It has been described as a tenacious, 
viscid, slimy substance, exhibiting under the 
microscope a net-work of granular, mucila¬ 
ginous matter, which expands and contracts 
spontaneously, and thus forms an organism 

410 



BATISTE-BATTERING-RAM. 


of the utmost simplicity corresponding in 
every respect to protoplasm. But the exis¬ 
tence of such a substance has been a matter 
of dispute among scientists. 

Batiste (ba-test'), a fine linen cloth made 
in Flanders and Picardy, named after its 
inventor Batiste of Cambray. 

Bat'ley, a municipal borough of England, 
West Riding of York, about a mile from 
Dewsbury, with which it is united for par¬ 
liamentary purposes; principal manufac¬ 
tures, heavy woollen cloths, such as pilot, 
beaver, police, army, and frieze cloths, flush¬ 
ings, and blankets. Pop. 1891, 28,719. 

Batman (bat'man or ba'man; from Fr. 
bat , a pack-saddle), in the British army, a 
person allowed by the government to every 
company of a regiment on foreign service. 
1 lis duty is to take charge of the cooking 
t tensils, &c., of the company, and he has a 
bat-horse to convey these utensils from place 
tt * place. 

Ba'ton, a short staff or truncheon, in some 
cases used as an official badge, as that of a 
field-marshal. The conductorof an orchestra 
has a baton for the purpose of directing the 
performers as to time, &c. In heraldry, what 
is usually called the ‘ bastard bar,’ or ‘ bar 
sinister,’ is properly a baton sinister. See 
bastard Bar. 

Bat'on Rouge (rozh), the capital of Loui¬ 
siana, United States, on the left bank of the 
Mississippi, with an arsenal, barracks, mili¬ 
tary hospital, state-house, state university, 
&c. On Aug. 5, 1862, the Confederates un¬ 
der General Breckenridge suffered a severe 
defeat before it. Pop. 1890, 10,478. 

Batoum, or Batum (ba-tom'), a port on 
the east coast of the Black Sea, acquired by 
Russia by the Treaty of Berlin, on condition 
that its fortifications were dismantled and it 
were thrown open as a free port. It rapidly 
grew to be the main outlet for Transcau¬ 
casia; its harbour was erdarged for alleged 
commercial reasons; an arsenal was built 
outside it; it was connected by a military 
road with Kars; and finally, in July, 1886, 
the Russian government declared it to be 
a free port no longer. Its importance as a 
naval and military station to Russia is un¬ 
questionably great, and it will probably rank 
as one of the strongest positions on the 
Black Sea. The water is of great depth 
close inshore, and the shipping lies under 
protection of the overhanging cliffs of the 
Gouriel Mountains. Pop. over 15,000. 

Batrachians (ba-tra'ki-anz), the fourth 
order in Cuvier’s arrangement of the class 

411 


Reptilia, comprising frogs, toads, newts, sala¬ 
manders, and sirens. The term is now often 
employed as synonymous with amphibia, 
but is more usually restricted to the order 
Anura or tailless amphibia. See Amphibia. 

Batshian. See Bachian. 

Bat'ta, an allowance which military 
officers in India receive in addition to their 
pay. It was originally given only when the 
officers were under march or in the field, 
but now half batta is paid when troops are 
in cantonments. 

Battalion, a body of men arrayed for 
battle; specifically, a body of infantry. 
In the United States army it consists of 
two, four, six, eight, or ten companies, 
according to circumstances, and is com 
manded by the senior officer present. The 
number of enlisted men varies from 100 
to 1000, in accordance with the minimum 
or maximum organization of the army. 
The army is divided into corps, divisions, 
brigades, regiments, and battalions. 

Bat'tas, a people belonging to the Ma¬ 
layan race inhabiting the valleys and pla¬ 
teaus of the mountains that extend longi¬ 
tudinally through the island of Sumatra. 
They practise agriculture and cattle-rearing, 
and are skilful in various handicrafts; they 
have also a written literature and an al¬ 
phabet of their own, their books treating 
of astrology, witchcraft, medicine, war, &c. 
They are under the rule of hereditary chief¬ 
tains. 

Bat'tenberg, a village in the Prussian 
prov. of Hesse-Nassau, from which the sons 
(by morganatic marriage) of Prince Alex¬ 
ander of Hesse, uncle of Louis, grand-duke 
of Hesse, the husband of Princess Alice of 
Britain, derive their title of princes of Bat- 
tenberg. One of them, Alexander, was 
elected Prince of Bulgaria in 1879, but 
had to abdicate in 1886. Another, Henry, 
was married to Princess Beatrice of Great 
Britain in 1885. A third, Louis, is married 
to a daughter of Princess Alice. 

Bat'tens, sawn deals, usually 12 to 14 
feet long, 7 inches broad, and 2^ inches 
thick. 

Battering-ram, an engine for battering 
down the walls of besieged places. The 
ancients employed two different engines of 
this kind—one suspended in a frame, the 
other movable on wheels or rollers. They 
consisted of a beam or spar with a massive 
metal head, and were set in motion either 
by a direct application of manual force or 
by means of cords passing over pulleys. 



BATTERSEA-BATTLE. 


Some are said to have been 120 feet or more 
in length, and to have been worked by 100 
men. One is described as being 180 feet 



Battering-ram. 


long, and having a head weighing 1^ tons. 
They were generally covered with a roof or 
screen for the protection of the workers. 

Bat'tersea, a surburban district of Lon¬ 
don, in Surrey, in a low situation on the 
south bank of the Thames, nearly opposite 
Chelsea, with a fine public park extending 
over 185 acres. The district is associated 
with the names of Pope and Bolingbroke, 
and with the Wellington-Winchilsea duel. 
With Clapham it forms a parliamentary 
borough, returning two members. Pop. 
of Battersea, 1891, 97,204. 

Bat'tery, as a military term, (1) any 
number of guns grouped in position for 
action; (2) any work constructed as a posi¬ 
tion for such guns; (3) the tactical unit of 
field-artillery, more properly described as a 
field battery, consisting in the American 
army of six guns with all necessary appur¬ 
tenances. There are, however, many kinds 
of batteries, distinguished by names, refer¬ 
ring either to position or the duties which 
they perform. In gun and howitzerbatteries 
there are embrasures through which the fir¬ 
ing takes place; but mortar batteries have 
no openings.— In battery, a term signify¬ 
ing a projecting, as a gun, into an embra¬ 
sure or over a parapet in position for 
firing. Cross-batteries are two batteries 
which play athwart each other, forming an 
angle upon the object battered; an en- 
echarpe-battery , a battery which plays 
obliquely on the enemy’s lines; an enfilade 
battery , a battery which scours or sweeps 
the whole line or length; an en-revers bat¬ 
tery, one which plays upon the enemy’s 
back. 

Battery, in physics, a combination of 
several jars or metallic plates, to increase 
the effect of electricity and galvanism. 

Battery, in criminal law, an assault by 


beating or wounding another. The least 
touching or meddling with the person of 
another against his will may be held to 
constitute a battery. 

Batthyanyi (bat-yan'ye), one of the oldest 
and most celebrated Hungarian families, 
traceable as far back as the Magyar inva¬ 
sion of Pannonia in the ninth century. 
Among later bearers of the name have been 
—Count Oasimir Batthyanyi, who was 
associated with Kossuth, was minister of 
foreign affairs in Hungary during the 
insurrection of 1849, and died in Paris 1854; 
Count Louis Batthyanyi, born 1809, of 
another branch of the family, was leader of 
the opposition in the Hungarian diet until 
the breaking out of the commotions of 1848, 
when he took an active part in promoting 
the national cause; but on the entry of 
Windischgratz into Pesth he was arrested 
and shot, 1849. 

Battle, a combat between two armies. 
In ancient times and the middle ages the 
battle-ground was often chosen by agree¬ 
ment, and the battle was a mere trial of 
strength, a duel en gros; and as the armies 
of the ancients were imperfectly organized, 
and the combatants fought very little at a 
distance, after the battle had begun man¬ 
oeuvres were much more difficult, and troops 
almost entirely beyond the control of the 
general. Under these circumstances the 
battle depended almost wholly upon the 
previous arrangements and the valour of 
the troops. In modern times, however, the 
finest combinations, the most ingenious 
manoeuvres, are rendered possible by the 
better organization of the armies, and it is 
the skill of the general rather than the 
courage of the soldier that now determines 
the event of a battle. Battles are distin¬ 
guished as offensive or defensive on either 
side, but there is a natural and ready tran¬ 
sition from one method to the other. As 
a rule the purely defensive attitude is 
condemned by tacticians except in cases 
where the only object desirable is to 
maintain a position of vital consequence, 
the weight of precedent being in favour of 
the dash and momentum of an attacking 
force even where opposed to superior 
forces. Where the greatest generals have 
acted upon the defensive, it has almost 
always been with the desire to develop 
an opportunity to pass to the offensive, 
and having discovered their opponent’s 
hand, to marshal against the enemy, ex¬ 
hausted with attack, the whole strength of 










BATTLE-BAUER 


their resources. Napoleon won more than 
one great victory by this method, and Wel¬ 
lington's reputation was largely based upon 
his skill in defensive-offensive operations. 
Tacticians have divided a battle into three 
periods: those of disposition, combat, and 
the decisive moment. In some measure 
they require distinct qualities in a com¬ 
mander, the intellect which can plot a dis¬ 
position being by no means always of the 
prompt judgment passing to instant action 
which avails itself of the crucial moment to 
crush an enemy. 

Battle, a town, England, county of Sus¬ 
sex, so named from the battle of Hastings 
being fought here. An abbey built by 
William the Norman has disappeared, but 
important remains of a subsequent building 
exist on the same site; and there is an old 
church of great interest. Pop. 1891, 3153. 

Battle (or Battel), Wager of, an obso¬ 
lete method, according to English law, of 
deciding civil or criminal cases by personal 
combat between the parties or their cham¬ 
pions in presence of the court. A woman, 
a priest, a peer, or a person physically in¬ 
capable of fighting could refuse such a trial. 
It was not abolished till 1818, but had long 
previously been in abeyance. 

Battle-axe, a weapon much used in war 
in the early part of the middle ages among 
knights. It is a weapon which affords 
hardly any guard, and the heavier the blow 
given with it the more the fighter is exposed; 
but its use was to some extent necessitated 
by the resistance of iron armour to all but 
heavy blows. In England and Scotland 
the battle-axe was much employed, the 
Lochaber-axe remaining a formidable im¬ 
plement of destruction in the hands of the 
Highlanders to a recent period. 

Battle Creek, a town of the United 
States, in Michigan, at the junction of the 
Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, with a col¬ 
lege, and manufactures of agricultural im¬ 
plements, &c. Pop. 13,197. 

Bat'tlement, a notched or indented para¬ 
pet of a fortification, formed by a series of 
raised parts called cops or merlons, separated 
by openings called crenelles or embrasures , 
the soldier sheltering himself behind the 
merlon while he fires through the embrasure. 
Battlements were originally military, but 
were afterwards used freely in ecclesiastical 
and civil buildings by way of ornament, on 
parapets, cornices, tabernacle work, &c. 

Battle-piece, a painting representing a 
battle. Some of the greatest pieces of this 

413 


kind are the Battle of Constantine, of which 
the cartoons were drawn by Raphael, and 
which was executed by Giulio Romano; 
Lebrun’s Battles of Alexander; and the 
Battles of the Amazons, by Rubens. 

Battue (ba-tii'), a method of killing game 
by having persons to beat a wood, copse, or 
other cover, and so drive the animals (phea¬ 
sants, hares, &c.) towards the spot where 
sportsmen are stationed to shoot them. 

Battus, reputed founder of the Greek 
colony of Cyrene in Libya about 650 B.c. 
There were eight rulers of the family founded 
by him, bearing alternately the names Bat¬ 
tus and Arcesilaus. 

Batu Khan, Mongol ruler of the western 
conquests of his grandfather Genghis Khan 
from 1224 to 1255. He overran Russia, 
Poland, Hungary, and Dalmatia, holding 
Russia for ten years. 

Batum. See Batoum. 

Baudelaire (bod-lar), Charles Pierre, 
French poet, born 1821. His first work of 
importance was a series of translations from 
Poe, ranking among the most perfect trans¬ 
lations in any literature. A volume of 
poems, Les Fleurs du Mai (1857), estab¬ 
lished his reputation as a leader of the 
Romanticists, though the police thought it 
necessary to deodorize them. Of a higher 
tone were his Petits Poemes en Prose; fol¬ 
lowed in 1859 by a monograph on Thdo- 
phile Gautier, in 1860 by Les Paradis Arti- 
ficiels (opium and haschish studies), and in 
1861 by Wagner and Tannhauser. He died 
in 1867. 

Baudry (bo-dre), Paul Jacques Aime, 
a prominent modern French painter, born 
1828, son of an artisan. He took the grand 
prix de Rome in 1850, and has exhibited 
many important works, of which the better 
known are his Charlotte Corday and La 
Perle et la Vague. The decoration of the 
foyer of the New Opera House at Paris 
was intrusted to him—an enormous work, 
occupying a total surface of 500 square 
metres, but admirably accomplished by him 
in eight years. 

Bauer (bou'er), Bruno, German philoso¬ 
pher, historian, and Biblical critic of the 
rational school; born 1809, died 1882. 
Wrote Critique of the Gospel of John 
(1840); Critique of the Synoptic Gospels 
(1840); History of the French Revolution 
to the Founding of the Republic (1847); 
History of Germany during the French 
Revolution and the Rule of Napoleon (1846); 
Critique of the Gospels (1850-51); Critiqu® 



BAUIIIN 


BAVARIA. 


of the Pauline Epistles (1850); Philo, Strauss, 
Renan, and Primitive Christianity *(1874); 
&c. 

Bauhin (bo-an), Gaspard, born at Basel 
in 1560; in 1580 elected to the Greek chair 
at Basel, and in 1589 to that of anatomy 
and botany. He died in 1624. His fame 
rests chiefly on his Pinax Theatri Botanici 
and Theatrum Botanicum. Linnaeus gave 
his name to a genus of plants. See Bau¬ 
hin ia. 

Bauhin'ia, a genus of plants, order Legu- 
minosae, usually twiners, found in the woods 
of hot countries, and often stretching from 
tree to tree like cables. Many are showy 
and interesting. The bark of B. variegata 
is used in tanning; the bast fibres of some 
Indian species are made into ropes and 
twine. 

Baumgarten (boum'gar-tn), Alexander 
Gottlieb, a German philosopher, born in 
1714 at Berlin; in 1740 was made professor 
of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 
and died there in 1762. He is the founder 
of aesthetics as a science, and the inventor 
of this name. His ideas were first de¬ 
veloped in his De Nonnullis ad Poema per- 
tinentibus (1735), and afterwards in the two 
volumes of his uncompleted HCsthetica, pub¬ 
lished 1750-58. 

Baur (bour), Ferdinand Christian, Ger¬ 
man theologian, founder of the ‘ Tubingen 
School of Theology;’ born in 1792. The 
publication of his first work, Symbolism and 
Mythology, or the Natural Religion of An¬ 
tiquity, in 1824-25, led to his appointment 
as professor in the evangelical faculty of 
Tubingen University, a position occupied 
by him till his death in 1860. His chief 
works in the department of the history of 
Christian dogma are: The Christian Gnosis, 
or the Christian Philosophy of Religion 
(1835); The Christian Doctrine of the 
Atonement (1838); The Christian Doctrine 
of the Trinity and the Incarnation (1841-3); 
the Compendium of and Lectures on the 
History of Christian Dogmas (1847, 1865). 
To the department of New Testament Criti¬ 
cism and the Early History of Christianity 
belong the So-called Pastoral Epistles of the 
Apostle Paul (1835); Paul the Apostle of 
Jesus Christ (1845); Critical Inquiries Con¬ 
cerning the Canonic Gospels (1847); A His¬ 
tory of Christian Doctrine to the End of 
the Eighteenth Century (1853-63). Baur’s 
views in regard to the church of the earliest 
times and the New Testament Scriptures 
have been very influential. He saw differ¬ 


ent and opposing tendencies at work in the 
church of apostolic times, and believed that 
the New Testament mainly took form in 
the second century, the only genuine writ¬ 
ings previous to A.D. 70 being the four great 
Pauline epistles and Revelation. 

Bautzen (bout'sen), or Budissin, German 
town in the kingdom of Saxony, upon a 
height on the right bank of the Spree, with 
some old and interesting buildings. The 
inhabitants are mostly Lutheran, and both 
Catholics and Protestants worship in the 
same cathedral. Chief manufactures : wool¬ 
lens, paper, gunpowder, machines. Napo¬ 
leon defeated the united armies of the Rus¬ 
sians and the Prussians at Bautzen on the 
21st May, 1813. Pop. 1890, 21,516. 

Bauxite (bak'sit), a clay found at Baux, 
near Arles in France, and exported from 
the north of Ireland (co. Antrim), containing 
a large proportion of alumina, and used as 
a lining for furnaces (such as Siemens’s) that 
have to support an intense heat, and as a 
source of aluminium. 

Bava'ria (German, Baiern; French, Ba- 
viere), a kingdom in the south of Germany, 
the second largest state of the empire, com¬ 
posed of two isolated portions, the larger 
comprising about eleven - twelfths of the 
monarchy, having the Austrian territories 
on the east, and Wurtemberg, Baden, &c., 
on the west, while the smaller portion, the 
Pfalz or Palatinate, is separated from the 
other by Wurtemberg and Baden, and lies 
west of the Rhine ; total area, 29,282 sq.m. 
Theprincipal divisions are: Upper Bavaria 
(pop. 1890, 1,103,160; chief town, Munich, 
capital of the kingdom,pop. 350,594); Lower 
Bavaria (664,798) ; Palatinate (728,339); 
Upper Palatinateand Regensburg(537,954); 
Upper Franconia (573,320); Middle Fran¬ 
conia (700,606); Lower Franconia and As- 
chafFenburg (618,489); Schwaben and Neu- 
burg (668,316); total population in 1890, 
5,594,982. After Munich the chief towns 
are Niirnberg, Augsburg, Wurzburg, and 
Ratisbon (Regensburg). The main portion 
of the kingdom is in most parts hilly; in the 
south, where it belongs to the Alps, moun¬ 
tainous; but north of the Alps and south 
of the Danube, which flows east through 
the country from Ulm to Passau, there is a 
considerable plateau, averaging about 1600 
feet above the sea-level. The south fron¬ 
tier is formed by a branch of the Noric Alps, 
offsets from which project far into the pla¬ 
teau; principal peaks: the Zugspitze, 10,394 
ft., and the Watzmann, 9470 ff, The highest 

414 



BAVARIA. 


summits on the Bohemian (Austrian') fron¬ 
tier, belonging to the Bbhmerwald Moun¬ 
tains, are the Rachel, 5102 ft., and the Ar- 
ber, 5185 ft. Ranges of less elevation bor¬ 
dering on or belonging to the country are 
the Fichtelgebirge in the north-east, the 
Fran ken wald, Rhongebirge, and Spessart 
in the north, and the Steigerwald and Fran¬ 
conian Jura in the middle. The Palatinate 
is traversed by the north extremity of the 
Vosges Mountains, the highest peak being 
the Konigstuhl, 2162 ft. The greater part 
of the country belongs to the basin of the 
Danube, which is navigable, its tributaries 
on the south being the Iller, Lech, Isar, 
and Inn; on the north, the Wornitz, Alt- 
miihl, Nab, and Regen. The northern por¬ 
tion belongs to the basin of the Main, which 
receives the Regnitz and Saale, and is a tri¬ 
butary of the Rhine. The Palatinate has 
only small streams that How into its boun¬ 
dary river the Rhine. The chief lakes of 
Bavaria are all on the higher part of the 
south plateau; the smaller within the range 
of the Alps. The Ammer-See is about 10 
miles long by 2h broad, 1736 ft. above the 
sea; the W firm-See or Starnberger-See, 
about 12 miles long by 3 broad, 1899 ft.; 
and Chiem-See, 9 miles long by 9 to 4 
broad, 1651 ft. The climate in general is 
temperate and healthy, though somewhat 
colder than the other South German states; 
yearly average about 47°. 

As regards soil Bavaria is one of the 
most fertile countries in Germany, produ¬ 
cing the various cereals in abundance, the 
best hops in Germany, fruit, wine, tobacco, 
&c., and having extensive forests. Lower 
Franconia (the Main valley) and the Pala¬ 
tinate are the great vine-growing districts. 
The celebrated Steinwein and Leistenwein 
are the produce of the slopes of the Stein¬ 
berg and Marienberg at Wurzburg (on the 
Main). The forests of Bavaria, chiefly fir 
and pine, yield a large revenue; much timber 
being annually exported, together with pot¬ 
ash, tar, turpentine, <fec. The principal min¬ 
eral products are salt, coal, and iron, some 
of the mining works belonging to the state. 
The minerals worked include copper, quick¬ 
silver, manganese, cobalt, porcelain clay, ala¬ 
baster, graphite. Large numbers of horses 
and cattle are reared, as also sheep and 
swine. The manufactures are individually 
mostly on a small scale. The principal 
articles manufactured are linens, woollens, 
cottons, leather, paper, glass, earthen and 
iron ware, jewelry, &c. The optical and 


mathematical instruments made are excel¬ 
lent. A most important branch of industry 
is the brewing of beer, for which there are 
upwards of 7000 establishments, producing 
over 260 millions of gallons a year. A 
number of the people maintain themselves 
by the manufacture of articles in wood, and 
by felling and hewing timber. The trade 
of Bavaria is comparatively limited, the 
total value of goods exported annually not 
exceeding $7,500,000. Principal exports : 
corn, timber, wine, cattle, glass, hops, fruit, 
beer, wooden wares, &c. The chief imports 
are sugar, coffee, cotton, rice, spices, dye¬ 
stuffs, silk and silk goods, lead, &c. From 
its position Bavaria has a considerable tran¬ 
sit trade. The Konig Ludwig Canal con- 
nects the Main at Bamberg with the 
Altmiihl a short distance above its embou¬ 
chure in the Danube, thus establishing 
water communication between the German 
Ocean and the Black Sea. The railway 
system has a total mileage of over 3000, 
mostly belonging to the state. 

Education i3 in a less satisfactory condi¬ 
tion than in most German states. There 
are about 7000 elementary schools, on which 
attendance is compulsory up to fourteen 
years of age. There are three universities, 
two of which (Munich and Wurzburg) are 
Roman Catholic, and one (Erlangen) Pro¬ 
testant. In art Bavaria is best known as 
the home of the Nfirnberg school, founded 
about the middle of the sixteenth century 
by Albert Diirer. Hans Holbein is also 
claimed as a Bavarian; and to these have 
to be added the eminent sculptors Kraft 
and Vischer, both born about the middle of 
the fifteenth century. The restoration of 
the reputation of Bavaria in art was chiefly 
the work of Ludwig I., under whom the 
capital became one of the most prominent 
seats of the fine arts in Europe. The reli¬ 
gion of the state is Roman Catholicism, 
which embraces more than seven-tenths of 
the population, nearly three-tenths being 
Protestants. All citizens, whatever their 
creed, possess the same civil and political 
rights. The dioceses of Bavaria comprise 
two R.C. archbishoprics, Munich and Bam¬ 
berg; and six bishoprics, Augsburg, Ratis- 
bon, Eichstadt, Passau, Wurzburg, and 
Spires. 

The Bavarian crown is hereditary in the 
male line. The executive is in the hands 
of the king. The legislature consists of two 
chambers—one of senators, composed of 
princes of the royal family, the great officers 


BAVARIA-BAXTERIANS. 


of the state, the two archbishops, the heads 
of certain noble families, and certain mem¬ 
bers appointed by the crown; the other 
of deputies, 159 in number, nominated by 
the electors, who are themselves elected, 
1 for every 500 of the population. The 
lower chamber is elected for six years. The 
revenue is about $60,000,000 a year; the 
public debt (1890) $335,503,105. Bavaria 
sends six members to the German Federal 
Council (Bundesrath) and forty-eight depu¬ 
ties to the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). The 
army (peace footing, 32,820; war footing, 
112,016) is raised by conscription — every 
man being liable to serve from the 1st of 
Jan. of the year in which he completes his 
twentieth year. In time of peace it is 
under the command of the King of Bavaria, 
but in time of war under that of the Em¬ 
peror of Germany, as commander-in-chief 
of the whole German army. 

History .—The Bavarians take their name 
from the Boii, a Celtic tribe whose territory 
was occupied by a confederation of Ger¬ 
manic tribes, called after their predecessors 
Boiarii. These were made tributary first to 
the Ostrogoths, and then to the Franks; and 
on the death of Charlemagne his successors 
governed the country by lieutenants with the 
title of margrave, afterwards converted (in 
921) into that of duke. In 1070 Bavaria 
passed to the family of the Guelphs, and in 
1180 by imperial grant to Otho, count of 
Wittelsbach, founder of the still reigning 
dynasty. In 1623 the reigning duke was 
made one of the electors of the empire. 
Elector Maximilian II. joined in the war of 
the Spanish succession on the side of France, 
and this led, after the battle of Blenheim, 
1704, to the loss of his dominions for the 
next ten years. His son, Charles Albert, 
likewise lost his dominions for a time to 
Austria, but they were all recovered again 
by Charles’s son, Maximilian III. (1745). 
In the wars following the French revolution 
Bavaria was in a difficult position between 
Fi’ance and Austria, but latterly joined 
Napoleon, from whom its elector Maximilian 
IV. received the title of king (1805), a title 
afterwards confirmed by the treaties of 1814 
and 1815. King Maximilian I. was succeeded 
by his son, Ludwig (or Louis) I., under whom 
various circumstances helped to quicken a 
desire for political change. Reform being 
refused, tumults arose in 1848, and Ludwig 
resigned in favour of his son, Maximilian II., 
under whom certain modifications of the con¬ 
stitution were carried out. At his death in 


1864 he was succeeded by Ludwig II. In 
the war of 1866 Bavaria sided with Austria, 
and was compelled to cede a small portion 
of its territory to Prussia, and to pay a war 
indemnity $12,500,000. Soon after Ba¬ 
varia entered into an alliance with Prussia, 
and in 1867 joined the Zollverein. In the 
Franco-German war of 1870-71 the Bavar¬ 
ians took a prominent part, and it was at the 
request of the King of Bavai’ia, on behalf of 
all the other princes and the senates of the 
free cities of Germany, that the King of 
Prussia agreed to accept the title of Emperor 
of Germany. Since Jan. 1871 Bavaria has 
been a part of the German Empire, and is 
represented in the Bundesrath by six, and 
in the Reichstag by forty-eight members. 
The eccentricity early displayed by Lud¬ 
wig II., developed to such an extent that 
in June, 1886, he was placed under control, 
and a regency established under Prince 
Liutpold (Leopold). The change was almost 
immediately followed by the suicide of the 
king, and as Prince Otto, the brother and 
heir of the late king, was insane, the regency 
was continued. 

Baxter, Richard, the most eminent of 
the English nonconforming divines of the 
seventeenth centiiry, born in Rowton, 
Shropshire, 1615; ordained in 1638; parish 
minister of Kidderminster in 1640. The 
imposition of the oath of universal appro¬ 
bation of the doctrine and discipline of the 
Church of England (the et cwtera oath ) de¬ 
tached him from the Establishment. After 
the battle of Naseby he accepted the chap¬ 
laincy of Colonel WhaHe/s regiment. He 
can scarcely be said, however, to have sepa¬ 
rated as yet in spirit from the Establish¬ 
ment. He upheld the monarchy, condemned 
the execution of the king and the election 
of Cromwell, preached against the Covenant 
and against separatists and sectaries, but 
his piety won him the respect of all parties. 
At the Restoration he became king’s chap¬ 
lain, but declined the bishopric of Hereford, 
and on the passage of the Act of Uniformity 
threw in his lot entirely with the noncon¬ 
formists. In 1685 he was arrested, refused 
a hearing by Jeffreys, and imprisoned. 
After his release he lived in retirement 
till his death in 1691. He left about 150 
treatises, of which his Saints’ Everlasting 
Rest and Call to the Unconverted have been 
the most popular. 

Baxterians, followers of Baxter in re¬ 
spect of his attempted compromise between 
Calvinism and Arminianism. They reject 



BAYEUX. 


BAY 


the doctrine of reprobation, admit a univer¬ 
sal potential salvation, becoming actual in 
the case of the elect, and assert the possi¬ 
bility of falling from grace. Exponents: Dr. 
Watts and Dr. Doddridge. 

Bay, the laurel-tree, noble laurel, or sweet- 
bay [Laurus nobttis) ; but the term is loosely 
given to many trees and shrubs resembling 
this. A fatty or fixed oil (used in veterinary 
medicine) and also a volatile oil is obtained 
from the berries, but what is called ‘ bay- 
berry oil ’ is also obtained from the genus 
Myrica or candleberry. In N. America the 
fragrant-flowered Magnolia glauca is called 
sweet-bay, the red-bay being Laurus caro- 
linensis, the loblolly-bay Gordonia lasian- 
thus. See Laurel. 

Bay, in geography, an indentation of some 
size into the shore of a sea or lake, gene¬ 
rally said to be one with a wider entrance 
than a gulf. 

Bay, in architecture, a term applied to a 
recessed division or compartment of a build¬ 
ing, as that marked off by buttresses or pil¬ 
lars. 

Ba'ya, the weaver-bird ( Ploc&us philip- 
pinus), an interesting East Indian passerine 
bird, somewhat like the bullfinch. Its nest 
resembles a bottle, and is suspended from 
the branch of a tree. The entrance is from 
beneath, and there are two chambers, one 
for the male, the other for the female. The 
baya is easily tamed, and will fetch and 
carry at command. 

Bayaderes (ba-a-derz'), the general Euro¬ 
pean name for the dancing and singing girls 
of India, some of whom are attached to the 
service of the Hindu temples, while others 
travel about and dance at entertainments for 
hire. Those in the service of the temples 
are generally devoted to this profession 
(including that of prostitution) from their 
childhood. 

Bayamo (ba-ya'mo), or St. Salvador, a 
town in the east of Cuba, near the Cauto; 
pop. 12,000. 

Bayard (ba-yar), Pierre du Terrail, 
Seigneur de, the Chevalier sans peur et sans 
rrproche (knight without fear and without 
reproach), born in 1476 in Castle Bayard, 
near Grenoble, in southern France. At 
the age of eighteen he accompanied Charles 
VIII. to Italy, and in the battle at Verona 
took a standard. At the beginning of the 
reign of Louis XII., in a battle near Milan, 
he entered the city at the heels of the fugi¬ 
tives, and was taken prisoner, but dismissed 
by Ludovico Sforza without ransom. In 
vol. i. 417 


Apulia he killed his calumniator, Sotomayor, 
and afterwards defended a bridge over the 
Garigliano singly against the Spaniards, 
receiving for this exploit as a coat of arms 
a porcupine, with the motto Vires agminis 
unus habet (‘one has the strength of a band’). 
He distinguished himself equally against 
the Genoese and the Venetians, and, when 
Julius II. declared himself against France, 
went to the assistance of the Duke of Fer¬ 
rara. He was severely wounded at the 
assault of Brescia, but returned, as soon as 
cured, to the camp of Gaston de Foix, be¬ 
fore Ravenna, and after new exploits was 
again dangerously wounded in the retreat 
from Pavia. In the war commenced by 
Ferdinand the Catholic he displayed the 
same heroism, and the fatal reverses which 
embittered the last years of Louis XII. 
only added to the personal glory of Bayard. 
When Francis I. ascended the throne he 
sent Bayard into Dauphin^ to open a pas¬ 
sage over the Alps and through Piedmont. 
Prosper Colonna lay in wait for him, but 
was made prisoner by Bayard, who im¬ 
mediately after further distinguished him¬ 
self in the battle of Marignano. After his 
defence of Mezihres against the invading 
army of Charles V. he was saluted in Paris 
as the saviour of his country, receiving the 
honour paid to a prince of the blood. His 
presence reduced the revolted Genoese to 
obedience, but failed to prevent the expul¬ 
sion of the French after the capture of Lodi. 
In the retreat the safety of the army was 
committed to Bayard, who, however, was 
mortally wounded by a stone from a blun¬ 
derbuss in protecting the passage of the 
Sesia. He kissed the cross of his sword, 
confessed to his squire, and died, April 30, 
1524. He was buried in a church of the 
Minorites, near Grenoble. 

Bayard, Thomas Francis, statesman, 
born at Wilmington, Del., 1828, educated 
at Flushing, studied law, and in 1868 was 
elected U. S. Senator, where he served till 
1884. In 1885 he was made Secretary of 
State in Mr. Cleveland’s cabinet. March 
30, 1893, was appointed ambassador extraor¬ 
dinary and plenipotentiary to England. 

Bay City, an American city, Mich., on the 
E. side of Saginaw River, near its mouth in 
Saginaw Bay, Lake Huron. Chief articles 
of trade, lumber and salt. Pop. 27,839. 

Bayeux (ba-yeu), an ancient town, France, 
dep. Calvados, 16 miles N.w. of Caen, with 
manufactures of lace, calico, and porcelain. 
In its cathedral, said to be the oldest in 

27 



BAYEUX TAPESTRY-BAYLE. 


Normandy, was preserved for a long time 
the famous Bayeux tapestry. (See next art.) 
Pop. 7178. 

Bayeux Tapestry, so called because it 
was originally found in the cathedral of 
Bayeux, in the public library of which town 
it is still preserved. It is supposed to have 
been worked by Matilda, queen of William 


the Conqueror, and to have been presented 
by Odo, bishop of Bayeux, the half-brother 
of William, to the church in which it was 
found. It is 214 feet in length and 20 inches 
in breadth, and is divided into seventy-two 
compartments, the subject of each scene 
being indicated by a Latin inscription. 
These scenes give a pictorial history of the 




52 " • 

sm\ Mi p Pafe 

II W U 



. - : * • * — V .. „ • • • *'4 - ; •* - -* : 



The Coronation of Harold—Men wonder at the Star—Harold on his Throne. 



The Battle of Hastings.—Portion of the Bayeux Tapestry. 


invasion and conquest of England by the 
Normans, beginning with Harold s visit to 
the Norman court, and ending with his 
death at Hastings. 

Bay Islands, an island group, Bay of 
Honduras, off N. coast of state of Honduras, 
incorporated as a British colony in 1852, 
and ceded to Honduras in 1856. The 
largest is Ruatan, 30 miles long. Pop. about 
5000. 

Bayle (bal), Piebre, French critic and 
miscellaneous writer, the son of a Calvin¬ 
ist preacher, born at Carlat (Languedoc) 
in 1647, died at Rotterdam 1706. He 
studied at Toulouse, and was employed for 
some time as a private tutor at Geneva 
and Rouen. He went to Paris in 1674, 


and soon after was appointed professor of 
philosophy at Sedan. Six years after he 
removed to Rotterdam, where he filled a 
similar chair. The appearance of a comet, 
in 1680, which occasioned an almost uni¬ 
versal alarm, induced him to publish, in 
1682, his Pens^es Diverses sur la Comhte, 
a work full of learning, in which he dis¬ 
cussed various subjects of metaphysics, 
morals, theology, history, and politics. It 
was followed by his Critique G^n^rale de 
l’Histoire du Calvinisme de Maimbourg. 
This work excited the jealousy of his col¬ 
league, the theologian Jurieu, and involved 
Bayle in many disputes. In 1684 he un¬ 
dertook a periodical work, Nouvelles de la 
Republique des Lettres, containing notices 

418 




































































BAYOU. 


BAY-LEAF 

of new books in theology, philosophy, his¬ 
tory, and general literature. This publica¬ 
tion, which lasted for three years, added much 
to his reputation as a philosophical critic. 
In 1693 Jurieu succeeded in inducing the 
magistrates of Rotterdam to remove Bayle 
from his office. He now devoted all his 
attention to the composition of his Dic- 
tionnaire Historique et Critique, which he 
first published in 1696, in two vols. fol. 
This work, much enlarged, has passed 
through many editions. It is a vast store¬ 
house of facts, discussions, and opinions, 
and though it was publicly censured by the 
Rotterdam consistory for its frequent im¬ 
purities, its pervading scepticism, and tacit 
atheism, it long remained a favourite book 
both with literary men and with men of the 
world. The articles in his dictionary, in 
themselves, are generally of little value, and 
serve only as a pretext for the notes, in 
whioh the author displays, at the same time, 
his learning and the power of his logic. 
The best editions are that of 1740, in four 
vols. fol. (Amsterdam and Leyden), and 
that in sixteen vols., published in 1820-24 
at Paris. 

• Bay-leaf, the leaf of the sweet-bay or 
laurel-tree (Laurus nobilis). These leaves 
are aromatic, and are used in cookery and 
confectionery. See Bay. 

Baylen (bl-len'). Same as Bailen. 

Bayly (ba'li), Thomas Haynes, English 
poet, novelist, dramatist, and miscellaneous 
writer, born 1797, died 1839. Educated at 
Oxford, and intended for the church. He 
wrote thirty-six pieces for the stage, most 
of which were successful; several novels: 
Aylmers, Kindness in Women, &c.; and 
numerous songs. As a song writer he was 
most prolific and most popular: The Sol¬ 
dier’s Tear, We met—’twas in a Crowd, and 
a few others, are still well known. 

Bay Mahogany, that variety of mahogany 
exported from Honduras. It is softer and 
less finely marked than the variety known 
as Spanish mahogany, but is the largest and 
most abundant kind. 

Baynes (biinz), Thomas Spencer, LL.I), 
born at Wellington, Somerset, in 1823, died 
suddenly in London, 1887. He studied under 
Sir William Hamilton at Edinburgh, and 
acted as his class assistant from 1851 to 
1855. From 1857 to 1863 he was resident 
in London, where he acted as examiner in 
logic and mental philosophy in the Univer¬ 
sity of London, and as assistant editor on 
the Daily News. In 1864 he was appointed 

419 


to the chair of logic, rhetoric, and metaphy¬ 
sics in St. Andrews University, a post he 
held till his death. In 1873, when he be¬ 
came editor of the ninth edition of the En¬ 
cyclopaedia Britannica, his wide acquaint¬ 
ance with men of letters and learning assisted 
him greatly in the selection of suitable con¬ 
tributors. He translated the Port Royal 
Logic, and was a frequent contributor to 
the principal reviews and literary journals. 

Bay oi Islands, a large, deep, and safe 
harbour on the n.e. coast of the N. Island 
of New Zealand. On it is Kororarika, the 
first European settlement in New Zealand. 
—Also a large bay formed by the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, on the west coast of New¬ 
foundland. 

Bay-oil, oil from the berries of the bay 
or laurel. See Bay. 

Bay'onet, a straight, sharp-pointed wea¬ 
pon, generally triangular, intended to be 
fixed upon the muzzle of a rifle or musket, 
which is thus transformed into a thrusting 
weapon: probably invented about 1640, in 
Bayonne. About 1690 the bayonet began 
to be fastened by means of a socket to the 
outside of the barrel, instead of being in¬ 
serted as formerly in the inside. A variety 
of the bayonet, called the sword-bayonet, is 
now pretty widely used in modern armies, 
especially for the short rifles of the light in¬ 
fantry, the carbines of the artillery, &c. 

Bayonne (ba-yon), a well-built fortified 
town, the largest in the French dep. Basses- 
Pyrendes, at the confluence of the Nive and 
the Adour, about 2 miles from their mouth 
in the Bay of Biscay; with a citadel com¬ 
manding the harbour and city, a cathedral— 
a beautiful ancient building, ship-building 
and other industries, and a considerable 
trade. Among the lower class the Basque 
language is spoken. Catharine de’ Medici 
had an important interview with the Duke 
of Alba in Bayonne, June, 1565, at which 
it is said the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
was arranged. It was also the scene of the 
abdication of Charles IY. of Spain in favour 
of Napoleon (1808). In 1814 the British 
forced the passage of the Nive and invested 
the town, from which the French made a 
desperate but unsuccessful sortie. Pop. 
23,120. 

Baycnne, a suburb of New York, in 
Hudson Co., New Jersey. Pop. 19,033. 

Bayou (ba-yo'), in the S. States of North 
America, a stream which flows from a lake 
or other stream: frequently used as synony¬ 
mous with creek or tidal channel, 



BAYREUTH-BAZOCHE. 


Bayreuth (bl'roit). See Baireuth. 

Bay Rum, a spirit obtained by distilling 
the leaves of Myrica acris, or other West 
Indian trees of the same genus. It is used 
for toilet purposes, and as a liniment in 
rheumatic affections. 

Bay-salt, a general term for coarse¬ 
grained salt, but properly applied to salt 
obtained by spontaneous or natural evapo¬ 
ration of sea-water in large shallow tanks 



Bay-window. 


or bays. 

Bay-window, a window forming a recess 

or bay in a room, 
pro j ecting out wards, 
and rising from 
the ground or base¬ 
ment on a plan 
rectangular, semi- 
octagonal, or semi- 
hexagonal, but al¬ 
ways straight-sided. 
The term is, how¬ 
ever, also often em¬ 
ployed to designate 
a bow-window, which. 
more properly forms 
the segment of a 
circle, and an oriel- 
window, which is 
supported on a kind 
of bracket, and is 
usually on the first-floor. 

Baza (ba'tha), an old town of Spain, An¬ 
dalusia, prov. of Granada, formerly a large 
and flourishing city. In 1810 the French, 
under Marshal Soult, here defeated the 
Spaniards under Generals Blake and Freire. 
Pop. 10,133. 

Bazaar. See Bazar. 

Bazaine (ba-zan), Francois Achille, 
French general, born 1811. He served in 
Algeria, in Spain against the Carlists, in 
the Crimean War, and joined the Mexican 
expedition as general of division in 1862, 
and in 1864 was made a marshal of France. 
He commanded the third army corps in the 
Franco-German war, when he capitulated 
at Metz, after a seven weeks’ siege, with an 
army of 175,000 men. For this act he was 
tried by court-martial in 1871, found guilty 
of treason, and condemned to death. This 
sentence was commuted to twenty years’ 
seclusion in the Isle St. Marguerite, from 
which he escaped and retired to Spain. 

Bazar', or Bazaar', in the East an ex¬ 
change, market-place, or place where goods 
are exposed for sale, usually consisting of 
•small shops or stalls in a narrow street or 


series of streets. These bazar-streets are 
frequently shaded by a light material laid 
from roof to roof, and sometimes are arched 
over. Marts for the sale of miscellaneous 



The Great Bazar, Constantinople. 


articles, chiefly fancy goods, are now to be 
found in most European cities bearing the 
name of bazars. The term bazar is also 
applied to a sale of miscellaneous articles, 
mostly of fancy work, and contributed gra¬ 
tuitously, in furtherance of some charitable 
or other purpose. 

Bazar'jik, a town of Bulgaria, south-east 
of Silistria. Pop. 9545. 

Bazigars', a tribe of Indians dispersed 
throughout the whole of Hindustan mostly 
in wandering tribes. They are divided 
into seven castes; their chief occupation is 
that of jugglers, acrobats, and tumblex-s, in 
which both males and females are equally 
skilful. They present many features ana¬ 
logous to the gypsies of Europe. 

Bazoche (ba-zosh'), or Basoche (a corrup¬ 
tion of Basilica), a brotherhood formed by 
the clerks of the parliament of Paris at the 
time it ceased to be the grand council of the 
French king. They had a king, chancellor, 
and other dignitaries; and certain privileges 
were granted them by Philip the Fair early 
in the fourteenth century, as also by subse¬ 
quent monarchs. They had an annual fes¬ 
tival, having as a principal feature dramatic 

420 




















































BDELLIUM-BEACONSFIELD. 


performances in which satirical allusions 
were freely made to passing events. The 
representation of these farces or satires was 
frequently interdicted, but their develop¬ 
ment had a considerable effect on the dra¬ 
matic literature of France. 

Bdellium (del'i-um),an aromatic gum resin 
brought chiefly from Africa and India, in 
pieces of different sizes and figures,externally 
of a dark reddish brown, internally clear, and 
not unlike glue. To the taste it is slightly 
bitterish and pungent; its odour is agree¬ 
able. It is used as a perfume and a medi¬ 
cine, being a weak deobstruent. Indian 
bdellium is the produce of Balsamodendron 
Roxburghii; African of B. africanum; 
Egyptian bdellium is obtained from the 
doum palm; and Sicilian is produced by 
Daucus gummifer, a species of the genus to 
which the carrot belongs. The bdellium 
mentioned in Gen. ii. was apparently a pre¬ 
cious stone, perhaps a pearl. 

Beaches, Raised, a term applied to those 
long terraced level pieces of land, consisting 
of sand and gravel, and containing marine 
shells, now, it may be, a considerable dis¬ 
tance above and away from the sea, but 
bearing sufficient evidences of having been 
at one time sea-beaches. In Scotland such 
a terrace has been traced extensively along 
the coasts at about 25 feet above the present 
sea-level. 

Beachy Head, a promontory in the south 
of England, on the coast of Sussex, rising 
575 feet above sea-level, with a revolving 
light, visible in clear weather from a distance 
of 28 miles. A naval battle took place here, 
June 3<>, 1690, in which a French fleet under 
Tourville defeated an English and Dutch 
combined fleet under Lord Torrington. 

Beacon (be'kon), an object visible to some 
distance, and serving to notify the presence 
of danger; commonly applied to afire-signal 
set on a height to spread the news of hostile 
invasion or other great event; and also 
applied to a mark or object of some kind 
placed conspicuously on a coast or over 
a rock or shoal at sea for the guidance of 
vessels, often an iron structure of consider¬ 
able height. 

Beaconsfield (be'konz-feld), a village of 
Buckinghamshire, the parish church of which 
contains the remains of Edmund Burke, 
whose seat was in the neighbourhood; while 
a marble monument to the poet Waller, 
who owned the manor, is in the churchyard. 
It gave the title of earl to the English 
statesman and novelist Benjamin Disraeli. 

m 


Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl 
of, an eminent English statesman and novel¬ 
ist, of Jewish extraction; eldest son of Isaac 
D’lsraeli, author of the Curiosities of Lit¬ 
erature ; born in London in 1804, died 



Lord Beaconsfield. 


there in 1881, buried at Hughenden. He 
attended for a time a private school, and was 
first destined for the law, but showing a de- 
cide4 taste for literature he was allowed to 
follow his inclination. In 1826 he published 
Vivian Grey, his first novel; and subse¬ 
quently travelled for some time, visiting 
Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria, and gain¬ 
ing experiences which were afterwards re¬ 
produced in his books. His travels and 
impressions are embodied in a volume of 
letters addressed to his sister and his father. 
In 1831 another novel, The Young Duke, 
came from his pen. It was followed at 
short intervals by Contarini Fleming, Alroy, 
Henrietta Temple, Venetia, The Revolu¬ 
tionary Epic (a poem), &c. In 1832, and 
on two subsequent occasions, he appeared 
as candidate for the representation of High 
Wycombe, with a programme which in¬ 
cluded vote by ballot and triennial parlia¬ 
ments, but was unsuccessful. His political 
opinions gradually changed: in 1835 he un¬ 
successfully contested Taunton as a Tory. In 
1837 he gained an entrance to the House 
of Commons, being elected for Maidstone. 
His first speech in the house was treated 
with ridicule; but he finished with the pro¬ 
phetic declaration that the time would come 
when they would hear him. During his 
first years in parliament he was a supporter 




bead-BEAM-TREE. 


■ii Peel; but when Peel pledged himself to 
abolish the corn-laws, Disraeli became the 
leader of the protectionists. About this 
time he became a leader of what was known 
as the ‘Young England’ party, the most 
prominent characteristic of which was a sort 
of sentimental advocacy of feudalism. This 
spirit showed itself in his two novels of 
Coningsby and Sybil, published respectively 
in 1844 and 1845. Having acquired the 
manor of Hughenden in Buckinghamshire, 
he was in 1847 elected for this county, and 
he retained his seat till raised to the peer¬ 
age nearly thirty years later. His first ap¬ 
pointment to office was in 1852, when he 
became chancellor of the exchequer under 
Lord Derby. The following year, however, 
the ministry was defeated. He remained 
out of office till 1858, when he again 
became chancellor of the exchequer, and 
brought in a reform bill which wrecked the 
government. During the time the Palmer¬ 
ston government was in office Mr. Disraeli 
led the opposition in the lower house with 
conspicuous ability and courage. In 1866 
the Liberals resigned, and Derby and Dis¬ 
raeli came into power, the latter being again 
chancellor of the exchequer. They imme¬ 
diately brought in, and carried, after a violent 
and bitter struggle, a Reform Bill on the basis 
of household suffrage. In 1868 he became 
premier on the resignation of Lord Derby, 
but his tenure of office was short. In 1874 
he again became prime-minister with a 
strong Conservative majority, and he re¬ 
mained in power for six years. This period 
was marked by his elevation to the peerage 
in 1876 as Earl of Beaconsfield, and by the 
prominent part he took in regard to the 
Eastern question and the conclusion of the 
Treaty of Berlin in 1878. In 1880 parlia¬ 
ment was rather suddenly dissolved, and 
the new parliament showing an overwhelm¬ 
ing Liberal majority, he resigned office, 
though he still retained the leadership of 
his party. Within a few months of his 
death the publication of a novel called En- 
dymion (his last, Lothair, had been published 
ten years before) showed that his intellect 
was still vigorous. Among others of his 
writings besides those already mentioned 
are: A Vindication of the English Constitu¬ 
tion, 1834; Alarcos, a Tragedy, 1839; and 
Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, 
1852. 

Bead (bed), originally a prayer; then a 
small perforated ball of gold, pearl, amber, 
glass,, or the like, to be strung on a thread, 


and used in a rosary by Roman Catholics in 
numbering their prayers, one bead being 
passed at the end of each ejaculation or 
short prayer; latterly any such small orna¬ 
mental body. Glass beads are now the most 
common sort; they form a considerable item 
in the African trade.—In architecture and 
joinery the bead is a small round mould¬ 
ing. It is of frequent occurrence in archi¬ 
tecture, particularly in the classical styles, 
and is used in picture-frames and other ob¬ 
jects carved in wood.— St. Cuthbert’s Beads, 
the popular name of the detached and per¬ 
forated joints of encrinites. 

Beadle (be'dl), an officer in a university, 
whose chief business is to walk with a mace 
in a public procession: also, a parish officer 
whose business is to punish petty offenders, 
and a church officer with various subordinate 
duties, as waiting on the clergyman, keeping 
order in church, attending meetings of vestry 
or session, &c. 

Bead-snake ( Flaps fulvius), a beautiful 
snake of North America, inhabiting culti¬ 
vated grounds, especially plantations of the 
sweet-potato, and burrowing in the ground. 
It is finely marked with yellow, carmine, 
and black. Though it possesses poison- 
fangs it never seems to use them. 

Beagle (be'gl), a small hound, formerly 
kept to hunt hares, now almost superseded by 
the harrier, which sometimes is called by its 
name. The beagle is smaller than the har¬ 
rier, compactly built, smooth-haired, and 
with pendulous ears. The smallest of them 
are little larger than the lap-dog. 

Beam, a long straight and strong piece of 
wood, iron, or steel, especially when holding 
an important place in some structure, and 
serving for support or consolidation; often 
equivalent to girder. In a balance it is the 
part from the ends of which the scales are 
suspended. In a loom it is a cylindrical 
piece of wood on which weavers wind the 
warp before weaving; also, the cylinder on 
which the cloth is rolled as it is woven. In 
a ship one of the strong transverse pieoes 
stretching across from one side to the other 
to support the decks and retain the sides at 
their proper distance: hence a ship is said to 
be ‘on her beam ends’ when lying over on 
her side. 

Beam-tree (Pyrus aria), a tree of the 
same genus as the apple, mountain-ash, and 
service-tree, having herries that are edible 
when quite mellow, and yielding a hard 
and fine-grained wood, used for axle-trees 
and other purposes. 

422 



BEAN-BEAR. 


Bean, a name given to several kinds of 
leguminous seeds and the plants producing 
them, probably originally belonging to Asia. 
Ihey belong to several genera, particularly 
to Faba, garden and field bean; Phaseulus, 
French or kidney bean; and Dolichos, tro¬ 
pical bean. The common bean (F. vulgaris) 
is cultivated both in fields and gardens as 
food for man and beast. There are many 
varieties, as the mazagan, the Windsor, the 
long-pod, &c., in gardens, and the horse or 
tick bean in fields. The soil that best suits 
is a good strong clay. The seed of the 
Windsor is fully an inch in diameter; the 
horse-bean is much less, often not much 
more than half an inch in length and three- 
eighths of an inch in diameter. Beans are 
very nutritious, containing 36 per cent of 
starch and 23 per cent of nitrogenous mat¬ 
ter called legumin, analogous to the caseine 
in cheese. The bean is an annual, from 
2 to 4 feet high. The flowers are beautiful 
and fragrant. The kidney-bean, French 
bean, or haricot is the Phaseulus vulgaris, 
a well-known culinary vegetable. There 
are two principal varieties, annual dwarfs 
and runners. The beans cultivated in Ame¬ 
rica and largely used as articles of food be¬ 
long to the genus Phaseulus. The scarlet- 
runner bean (Phaseulus coccineus), a native 
of Mexico, is cultivated on account of its 
long rough pods and its scarlet flowers.— St. 
Ignatius' bean is not really a bean, but the 
seed of a large climbing shrub, of the order 
Loganiaceae, nearly allied to the species of 
Strychnos which produces nux vomica. 

Bean-goose ( Anser segetum), a species of 
■wild goose, a migratory bird which arrives 
in Britain in autumn and retires to the 
north in the end of April, though some few 
remain to breed. Being rather less than 
the common wild goose, it is sometimes 
called the small gray goose. 

Bean-king, the person chosen king in 
Twelfth Night festivities in virtue of hav¬ 
ing got the piece of cake containing the bean 
buried in the cake for this purpose. 

Bear, the name of several large planti¬ 
grade carnivorous mammals of the genus 
Ursus. The teeth are forty-two in number, 
as in the dog, but there is no carnassial or 
sectorial tooth, and the molars have a more 
tubercular character than in other carni¬ 
vores. The eyes have a nictitating mem¬ 
brane, the nose is prominent and mobile, 
and the tail very short. The true bears 
are about ten in number, natives chiefly of 
Europe, Asia, and N. America. They gener¬ 

423 


ally lie dormant in their den during the 
winter months. The brown or black bear 
of Europe is the Ursus arctos. It is a native 
of almost all the northern parts of Europe 



Brown Bear (Ursus arctos). 


and Asia, and was at one time common in 
the British islands. It feeds on fruits, roots, 
honey, ants, and, in case of need, on mam¬ 
mals. It sometimes reaches the length of 
7 feet, the largest specimens being found 
furthest to the north. It lives solitarily. 
The American black bear is the U. ameri- 
canus, with black shining hair, and rarely 
above 5 feet in length. It is a great 
climber, is less dangerous than the brown 
bear, and is hunted for its fur and flesh. It 
is very amusing in captivity. The grizzly 
bear ( U.ferox or horribilis ) is an inhabitant 
of the Rocky Mountains; it is a ferocious 
animal, sometimes 9 feet in length, and 
has a bulky and unwieldy form, but is 
nevertheless capable of great rapidity of 



Polar Bear (Ursus maritlmus). 


motion. The extinct cave-bear (U. spelceus) 
seems to have been closely akin to the 
grizzly. The Siberian bear ( U . collar is) is 
perhaps a variety of the brown bear. The 
polar or white bear ( U. maritlmus) is an 




















BEAR 


BEAR RIVER. 


animal possesseu of great strength and 
fierceness. It lives in the polar regions, fre¬ 
quents the sea, feeds on fish, seals, &c., and 
usually is 7 to 8 feet in length. The Malayan 
or coco-nut palm bear ( U. rnaZayanus) is per¬ 
haps the smallest of the bears. It inhabits 
Cochin-China, Nepaul, the Sunda Islands, 
&c., lives exclusively on vegetable food, and 
is an expert climber. It is called also sun- 
bear and bruang. The Indian black bear or 
sloth-bear of India and Ceylon ( U. labiatus) 
is reputed to be a fierce and dangerous 
animal. 

Bear, or Bere, a species of barley ( Hor- 
deum hexastichum), having six rows in the 
ear, cultivated in Scotland and the north of 
England. 

Bear, Great and Little, the popular 
name of two constellations in the northern 
hemisphere. The Great Bear ( Ursa Major) 
is situated near the pole. It is remarkable 
for its well-known seven stars, by two of 
which, called the Pointers, the pole-star is 
always readily found. These seven stars 
are popularly called the Wagon, Charles s 
Wain, or the Plough. The Little Bear 
(Ursa Minor) is the constellation which 
contains the pole-star. This constellation 
has seven stars placed together in a manner 
resembling those in the Great Bear. 

Bear-baiting, the sport of baiting bears 
with dogs, formerly one of the established 
amusements, not only of the common people, 
but of the nobility and even royalty itself. 
The places where bears were publicly baited 
were called bear-gardens. 

Bearberry ( Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), an 
evergreen shrub of the heath family grow¬ 
ing on the barren moors of Scotland, North¬ 
ern Europe, Siberia, and N. America. The 
leaves, under the name of uva ursi, are 
used in medicine as an astringent and 
tonic. 

Beard, the hair round the chin, on the 
cheeks, and the upper lip, which is a distinc¬ 
tion of the male sex and of manhood. It 
differs from the hair on the head by its 
greater hardness and its form. Some nations 
have hardly any, others a great profusion. 
The latter generally consider it as a great 
ornament; the former pluck it out; as, for 
instance, the American Indians. The beard 
has often been considered as a mark of 
the sage and the priest. Moses forbade 
the Jews to shave their beards. With the 
ancient Germans the cutting off another’s 
beard was a high offence. Even now the 
beard is regarded as a mark of great dignity 


among many nations in the East, as the 
Turks. Alexander the Great introduced 
shaving among the Greeks, by ordering his 
soldiers to wear no beards; among the 
Romans it was introduced in B.c. 296. The 
custom of shaving is said to have come into 
use in modern times during the reigns of 
Louis XIII. and XIV. of France, both of 
whom ascended the throne without a beard. 
Till then fashion had given divers forms of 
moustaches and beards. It is only in com- 
paratively recent times that beards and 
moustaches have again become common. 

Beard-grass, a name given to two well- 
known British grasses of the genus Polypo- 
gon from the bearded appearance of the 
panicles. 

Beard-moss ( Usnea barbata), a lichen of 
gray colour, forming a shaggy coat on many 
forest trees. 

Bearing, the direction or point of the 
compass in which an object is seen, or the 
situation of one object in regard to another, 
with reference to the points of the compass. 
Thus, if from a certain situation an object 
is seen in the direction of north-east, the 
bearing of the object is said to be N.E. from 
the situation.— To take bearings, to ascer¬ 
tain on what point of the compass objects 
lie. 

Bear Lake, Great, an extensive sheet of 
fresh water in the North-west Territory of 
Canada, between about 65° and 67° 32' N. 
lat.; and under the 120th degree of w. Ion.; 
of irregular shape; area about 14,000 sq. 
miles. The water is very clear and the lake 
abounds in fish. —Bear-lake River, the 
outlet at the s.w. extremity of Great Bear 
Lake, runs s.w. for 70 miles and joins the 
Mackenzie River. 

Bearn (ba-arn), one of the provinces into 
which France was formerly divided, now 
chiefly included in the department of Lower 
Pyrenees. Pau is the chief town. There 
is a peculiar and well-marked dialect—the 
Bearnese—spoken in this district, which 
has much more affinity with the Spanish 
than with the French. 

Bear-pit, a deep, open pit with perpen¬ 
dicular walls, built in a zoological garden 
for keeping bears, and having in the centre 
a pole in which they may exercise their 
climbing powers. 

Bear River, a river of the United States, 
400 miles long; rises in the north of Utah, 
and flows northward into Idaho; turns 
abruptly southward, re-enters Utah, and 
empties into Great Salt Lake. 

424 



BEATTIE. 


BEAR’S GREASE 


Bear’s-grease, the fat of bears, esteemed 
as of great efficacy in nourishing and pro¬ 
moting the growth of hair. The ungents 
sold under this name, however, are in a 
great measure made of hog’s lard or veal 
fat, or a mixture of both, scented and 
slightly coloured. 

Beas, river of India. See Bias. 

Beat, in music, the beating or pulsation 
resulting from the joint vibrations of two 
sounds of the same strength, and all but 
in unison. Also a short shake or transient 
grace-note struck immediately before the 
note it is intended to ornament. 

Beatification, in the Roman Catholic 
Church, an act by which the pope declares 
a person beatified or blessed after his death. 
It is the first step to canonization, that is, 
the raising one to the honour and dignity of 
a saint. No person can be beatified till 
fifty years after his or her death. All 
certificates or attestations of virtues and 
miracles, the necessary qualifications for 
saintship, are examined by the Congrega¬ 
tion of Rites. This examination often con¬ 
tinues for several years; after which his 
holiness decrees the beatification, and the 
corpse and relics of the future saint are 
exposed to the veneration of all good Chris¬ 
tians. 

Beating the Bounds, the periodical sur¬ 
vey or perambulation by which the boun¬ 
daries of parishes in England are preserved. 
It is, or was, the custom that the clergy¬ 
man of the parish, with the parochial 
officers and the boys of the parish school, 
should march to the boundaries, which the 
boys struck with willow rods. A similar 
ceremony in Scotland is called riding the 
marches. 

Bea'ton, David, Archbishop of St. An¬ 
drews, and cardinal; born 1494. Pope 
Paul III. raised him to the rank of cardinal 
in December, 1538. On the death of his 
uncle, Archbishop James Beaton, he suc¬ 
ceeded him in the see of St. Andrews in 
1539. After the accession of Mary he became 
Chancellor of Scotland, and distinguished 
himself by his zeal in persecuting members 
of the Reformed party, among the rest the 
famous Protestant preacher George Wish- 
art, whose sufferings at the stake he viewed 
from his window with apparent exultation. 
At length a conspiracy was formed against 
him, and he was assassinated at his own 
castle of St. Andrews, on the 29th May, 
1546. His private character was marked 
by pride, cruelty, and licentiousness, 

425 


Beatrice Portinari (ba-a-tre'cha por-te- 
na're), the poetical idol of Dante; born 
about 1266, died 1290; the daughter of a 
wealthy citizen of Florence, and wife of 
Simone de Bardi. She was but eight years 
of age, and Dante nine, when he met her 
first at the house of her father. He alto¬ 
gether saw her only once or twice, and she 
probably knew little of him. The story of 
his love is recounted in the Vita Nuova, 
which was mostly written after her death. 

Beattie (be'ti), James, a Scottish poet 
and miscellaneous writer; born at Laurence¬ 
kirk, Kincardineshire, inl735; died at Aber¬ 
deen 1803. He studied at Marischal Col¬ 
lege, Aberdeen, for four years, and received 
the M.A. degree. In 1753 he was appointed 
schoolmaster at Fordoun, a few miles from 
his native place; from whence he obtained 
a mastership in the Grammar School of 
Aberdeen, and ultimately was installed pro¬ 
fessor of moral philosophy and logic in 
Marischal College. In 1760 he published 
a volume of poems, which he subsequently 
endeavoured to buy up, considering them 
unworthy of him. In 1765 he published a 
poem, the Judgment of Paris, and in 1770 
his celebrated Essay on Truth, for which 
the University of Oxford conferred on him 
the degree of LL.D.; and George III. hon¬ 
oured him, when on a visit to London, with 
a private conference and a pension. He 
next published in 1771 the first book of his 
poem the Minstrel, and in 1774 the second; 
this is the only work by which he is now 
remembered. In 1776 he published disser¬ 
tations on Poetry and Music, Laughter and 
Ludicrous Composition, &c.; in 1783 Dis¬ 
sertations, Moral and Critical; in 1786 Evi¬ 
dences of the Christian Religion; and in 
1790-93 Elements of Moral Science. His 
closing years w r ere darkened by the death 
of his two sons. 

Beattie, William, M.D., Scottish phy¬ 
sician, poet, and miscellaneous writer; born 
in 1793, died at London 1875. He was 
author of the standard Life of Thomas 
Campbell, whose intimate friend he was; 
published several poems, including John 
Huss, the Heliotrope, and Polynesia; wrote 
a series of descriptive and historical works, 
beautifully illustrated by his friend and fel¬ 
low-traveller, W. H. Bartlett, on Switzer¬ 
land, Scotland, The Waldenses, The Danube, 
Castles and Abbeys of England, &c. 

Beatrice, Gage county, Neb., 43 miles 
south of Lincoln : several mills and stone 
quarry. Pop, 13,836, 



BEAUCAIRE-BEAUMARCHAIS. 


Beaucaire (bo-kar), a small, well-built, 
commercial city of Southern France, dep. 
Gard, on the Rhone opposite Tarascon, with 
which it communicates by a fine suspension- 
bridge. It is chiefly famous for its great 
fair (founded in 1217), held yearly from 
the 21st to the 28th July. Pop. 9724. 

Beauchamp (b5-shan), Alphonse de, 
French historian and publicist, born at Mon¬ 
aco 1767, died at Paris 1832. Under the 
Directory he had the surveillance of the 
press, a position which supplied him with 
materials for his History of La Vendee. He 
contributed to the Moniteur and the Gazette 
de France. Among his chief works are the 
History of the Conquest of Peru, the His¬ 
tory of Brazil, and the Life of Louis XVIII. 
The M^moires of Fouch4 is also with good 
reason ascribed to him. 

Beaufort (bo' fort), Henry, cardinal, 
natural son of John of Gaunt and half- 
brother of Henry IV., king of England, 
born 1377, died 1447; was made Bishop of 
Lincoln, whence he was translated to Win¬ 
chester. He repeatedly filled the office of 
lord-chancellor, and took part in all the 
most important political movements of his 
times. 

Beaugency (bo-zhan-se), an ancient town, 
France, dep. Loiret, on the Loire, of some 
historical interest. General Chanzy was 
defeated here by the Grand-duke of Meck¬ 
lenburg, 7th-8th December, 1870. Pop. 
5029. 

Beauharnais (bo-ar-na), Alexandre, 
Viscount, was born in 1760 in Martinique. 
He married Josephine Tascher de la 
Pagerie, who was afterwards the wife of 
Napoleon. At the breaking out of the 
French revolution he was chosen a member 
of the National Assembly, of which he was 
for some time president. In 1792 he was 
general of the army of the Rhine. He was 
falsely accused of having promoted the 
surrender of Mainz, and was sentenced to 
death July 23, 1794. 

Beauharnais, Eugene de, Duke of 
Leuchtenberg,Prince of Eichstadt,and Vice¬ 
roy of Italy during the reign of Napoleon, 
was born 1781, died at Munich 1824. He 
was the son of Alexandre Beauharnais and 
Josephine, afterwards wife of Napoleon 
and Empress of France. After his father’s 
death he joined Hoche in La Vendee, and 
subsequently studied for a time in Paris. 
He accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in 
1798; rose rapidly in the army; was ap¬ 
pointed viceroy of Italy in 1805; and 


married a daughter of the King of Bavaria 
in 1806. He administered the government 
of Italy with great prudence and modera¬ 
tion, and was much beloved by his subjects. 
In the Russian campaign he commanded 
the third corps d'armee, and greatly distin¬ 
guished himself. To him and to Ney France 
was mainly indebted for the preservation 
of the remains of her army during the re¬ 
treat from Moscow. After the battle of 
Liitzen of May 2, 1813, where, by surround¬ 
ing the right wing of the enemy, he decided 
the fate of the day, he went to Italy, which 
he defended against the Austrians until the 
deposition of Napoleon. After the fall of 
Napoleon he concluded an armistice, by 
which he delivered Lombardy and all Upper 
Italy to the Austrians. He then went im¬ 
mediately to Pai’is, and thence to his father- 
in-law at Munich, where he afterwards 
resided.— His sister Hortense Eugenie, 
Queen of Holland, was born in 1783, died 
in 1837. She became Queen of Holland 
by marrying Louis Bonaparte, and after 
Louis’s abdication of the throne she lived 
apart from him. She wrote several excellent 
songs, and composed some deservedly popu¬ 
lar airs, among others the well-known Par- 
tant pour la Syrie. Napoleon III. was her 
third and youngest son. 

Beaumarchais (bo-mar-sha), Pierre 
Augustin Caron de, a French wit and 
dramatist, was born at Pai-is in 1732, died 
1799. He was the son of a watchmaker 
named Caron, whose trade he practised for 
a time. He early gave striking proofs of his 
mechanical and also of his musical talents; 
attained proficiency as a player on the 
guitar and harp, and was appointed harp- 
master to the daughters of Louis XV. By 
a rich marriage (after which he added ‘ de 
Beaumarchais’ to his name) he laid the foun¬ 
dation of the immense wealth which he after¬ 
wards accumulated by his speculations, and 
which was also increased by a second mar¬ 
riage. In the meantime he occupied himself 
with literature, and published two dramas 
—Eugenie in 1767 and Les Deux Amis in 
1770. He first really distinguished himself 
by his Meraoires (Paris, 1774), or state¬ 
ments in connection with a lawsuit, which 
by their wit, satire, and liveliness enter¬ 
tained all France. The Barber of Seville 
(1775) and the Marriage of Figaro (1784) 
have given him a permanent reputation. 
His last work was Mes Six £poques, in 
which he relates the dangers to which he 
was exposed in the revolution. He lost 

426 



BEAUMARIS 


BEAUNE. 


about a million livres by his edition of the 
works of Voltaire (1785), and still more at 
the end of 1792 by his attempt to provide 
the French army with 60,000 muskets. 
He was a singular instance of versatility of 
talent, being at once an artist, politician, 
projector, merchant, and dramatist. 

Beaumaris (bo-ma'ris), a seaport town, 
North Wales, Isle of Anglesey, on the Menai 
Strait. It is a favourite watering-place, 
and contains the remains of a castle built 
by Edward I. about 1295. Pop. 2202. 

Beaumont (bo'mont), Francis, and Flet¬ 
cher, John, two eminent English dramatic 
writers, contemporaries of Shakspere, and 
the most famous of literary partners. The for¬ 
mer, son of a common pleas judge, was born 
at Grace-Dieu, in Leicestershire, in 1584; 
died in 1616, and was buried in Westminster 
Abbey. At the age of sixteen he published 
a translation, in verse, of Ovid’s fable of Sal- 
macis and Hermaphroditus, and before nine¬ 
teen became the friend of Ben Jonson. With 
Fletcher also he was early on terms of friend¬ 
ship. He married Ursula, daughter of Henry 
Isleyof Sundridge, in Kent, by whom he left 
two daughters.— John Fletcher was born 
at Rye, Sussex, in 1579. His father was 
successively dean of Peterborough, bishop of 
Bristol, Worcester, and London. The 
Woman Hater, produced in 1606-7, is the 
earliest work known to exist in which he 
had a hand. It does not appear that he was 
ever married. He died in London of the 
plague, August, 1625, and was buried at St. 
Saviour’s, Southwark. The friendship of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, like their literary 
partnership, was singularly close; they 
lived in the same house, and are said to 
have even had their clothes in common. 
The works that pass under their names 
consist of over fifty plays, a masque, and 
some minor poems. It is believed that all 
the minor poems except one were written 
by Beaumont. After the death of Beau¬ 
mont Fletcher continued to write plays alone 
or with other dramatists. It is now difficult, 
if not indeed impossible, to determine with 
certainty the respective shares of the two 
poets in the plays passing under their names. 
According to the testimony of some of 
their contemporaries Beaumont possessed the 
deeper and more thoughtful genius, Fletcher 
the gayer and more idyllic. Four Plays in 
One, Wit at Several Weapons, Thierry and 
Theodoret, Maid’s Tragedy, Philaster, King 
and No King, Knight of the Burning 
Pestle, Cupid’s Revenge, Little French 

427 


Lawyer, Scornful Lady, Coxcomb, and 
Laws of Candy have been assigned to 
Beaumont and Fletcher conjointly. To 
Beaumont alone—The Masque of the In¬ 
ner Temple and Gray’s Inn. To Fletcher 
alone—The Faithful Shepherdess, Woman- 
hater, Loyal Subject, Mad Lover, Valen- 
tinian, Double Marriage, Humorous Lieu¬ 
tenant, Island Princess, Pilgrims, Wild 
goose Chase, Spanish Curate, Beggars 
Bush, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Fair 
Maid of the Inn, &c. To Fletcher and 
Rowley — Queen of Corinth, Maid of the 
Mill, and Bloody Brother. To Fletcher and 
Massinger—False One, and Very Woman. 
To Fletcher and Shirley—Noble Gentle¬ 
man, Night-walker, and Love’s Pilgrimage. 
To Fletcher and Shakspere — Two Noble 
Kinsmen. 

Beaumont, Sir George, born of an an¬ 
cient family in Leicestershire in 1753, died 
1827. He possessed considerable skill as 
a landscape-painter, but was noted more 
especially as a munificent patron of the arts. 
The establishment of the National Gallery 
was mainly owing to his exertions. 

Beaumont, Sir John, born 1582, died 
1628, brother of Francis Beaumont the 
dramatist; published Boswortli Field, an 
historical poem. He also wrote a poem in 
eight books, never printed, called The 
Crown of Thorns. 

Beaumont, Joseph, D.D., born 1615, 
died 1699; descended from an old Leices¬ 
tershire family. In 1663 he became master 
of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Wrote 
Psyche, or Love’s Mystery, a poem once 
very popular, and an attack on Henry 
More’s Mystery of Godliness, for which he 
received the thanks of the university. 

Beaumont, William, M.D., an American 
surgeon, born 1785, died 1853. His experi¬ 
ments on digestion with the Canadian St. 
Martin, who lived for years after receiving 
a gunshot wound in the stomach which left 
an aperture of about two inches in diameter, 
were of great importance to physiological 
science. 

Beaune (b6n), a town, France, dep. Cote 
d’Or, 23 miles s.s.w. Dijon, well built, with 
handsome church, public library, museum, 
&c., and a trade in the fine Burgundy and 
other wines of the district. 

Beaune (bon), Florimond, a distinguished 
mathematician and friend of Descartes, 
born at Blois 1601, died at the same place 
1652. He may be regarded as the founder 
of the integral calculus. 



BEAUREGARD 


EEC. 


Beauregard (bo're-gard), Peter Gusta- 
vus Toutant, a general of the Confederate 
troops in the American civil war; born in 
1818 near New Orleans. He studied at the 
military academy, West Point, and left it 
as artillery lieutenant in 1838. He served 
in the Mexican war, and on the outbreak of 
the civil war joined the Confederates. He 
commanded at the bombardment of Fort 
Sumter, gained the battle of Bull Run, lost 
that of Shiloh, assisted in the defence of 
Charleston, and aided Lee in that of Rich¬ 
mond. He died Feb. 20, 1893. 

Beausobre (bo-sG-br), Isaac, born in 1659 
at Niort, in France, died at Berlin 1738. In 
1683 he became Protestant minister of Cha- 
tillon-sur-Indre, but was compelled by per¬ 
secution to go into exile in 1685. In 1694 
he became minister to French Protestants 
at Berlin. He enjoyed much of the favour 
both of Frederick William I. and of the 
crown - prince, afterwards Frederick the 
Great, and died in 1738. His most remark¬ 
able work is the Histoire Critique de Mani- 
chee et du Manichdisme (1734). 

Beauty, The Beautiful. See ^Es¬ 
thetics. 

Beauvais (bG-va; ancient BeUovacum), a 
town, France, capital of the department of 
Oise, at the confluence of the Avelon with 
the Therain, 43 miles north of Paris, poorly 
built, but with some fine edifices, the choir 
of the uncompleted cathedral being one of 
the finest specimens of Gothic architecture 
in France. In 1472 Beauvais resisted an 
army of 80,000 Burgundians under Charles 
the Bold. On this occasion the women par¬ 
ticularly distinguished themselves, and one 
of them, Jeanne Laine, called La Hachette, 
seeing a soldier planting a standard on the 
wall, seized it and hurled him to the ground. 
The banner is preserved in the town-hall, and 
an annual procession of young girls com¬ 
memorates the deed. Manufactures: tapes¬ 
try and carpets, trimmings, woollen cloth, 
cottons, &c. Pop. 15,318. 

Beaver, a rodent quadruped, about 2 feet 
in length exclusive of the tail, genus Castor 
(C. fiber), at one time common in the nor¬ 
thern regions of both hemispheres, but now 
found in considerable numbers only in North 
America, living in colonies, but occurring 
solitary in Central Europe and Asia. It 
has short ears, a blunt nose, small fore-feet, 
large webbed hind-feet, with a flat ovate 
tail covered with scales on its upper surface. 
It is valued for its fur, which used to be 
largely employed in the manufacture of 


hats, but for which silk is now for the most 
part substituted, and for an odoriferous se¬ 
cretion named castor, at one time in high 
repute, and still largely used in some parts 
of the world as an anti-spasmodic medicine. 



Beaver (Castor fiber). 


The food of the beaver consists of the bark 
of trees, leaves, roots, and berries. Their fa¬ 
vourite haunts are rivers and lakes which are 
bordered by forests. In winter they live in 
houses, which are 3 to 4 feet high, are built 
on the water’s edge, and being substantial 
structures with the entrance under water 
afford them protection from wolves and 
other wild animals. These dwellings are 
called beaver ‘lodges,’ and accommodate a 
single family. They also live in burrows. 
They can gnaw through large trees with 
their strong teeth, this being done partly 
to obtain food, partly to get materials for 
houses or dam-building. When they find a 
stream not sufficiently deep for their pur¬ 
pose they throw across it a dam constructed 
with great ingenuity of wood, stones, and 
mud. The beaver has been long extinct 
in Britain, but a colony has recently been 
introduced into the island of Bute. 

Beaver, the movable face-guard of a hel¬ 
met, so fitted on as to be raised and lowered 
at pleasure. 

Beaver-rat (Hydromys chry soy aster), a 
Tasmanian rodent quadruped, inhabiting the 
banks both of salt and fresh waters. They 
are admirable swimmers and divers, and ex¬ 
ceedingly shy. 

Beaver Falls, Pa., near the junction of 
the Beaver River with the Ohio, 34 miles 
from Pittsburgh. Various factories are 
here. Pop. 1890, 9734. 

Bebee'ru (Nectandra Rodicei), a tree of 
British Guiana, yielding green-heart tim¬ 
ber. 

Bee, a celebrated abbey of France, in 
Normandy, near Brionne, now represented 
only by some ruins. Lanfranc and Anselm 
were both connected with this abbey. 

428 









BECCAFTOO-BECKER. 


Beccaii'co, a European bird (Sylvia hor- 
tensis), the garden-warbler. 

Beccafu'mi, Domen'ico, Italian painter, 
born near Sienna in the latter half of the 
fifteenth century, enriched the churches of 
Sienna with many noble frescoes and other 
paintings. H e drew and coloured well, and 
possessed strong inventive powers. He 
died at Sienna 1551, and was buried in its 
cathedral. 

Beccaria (bek-a-re'a), Cesare Bonesana, 
Marchese di, Italian economist and writer 
on penal laws; born 1735 or 1738, died 1793. 
He is principally known from his treatise, 
On Crimes and Punishments, which was 
speedily translated into various languages, 
and to which many of the reforms in the 
penal codes of the principal European na¬ 
tions are traceable. He became professor 
of political economy at Milan, where he 
died. 

Beccaria (bek-a-re'a), Giovanni Bat¬ 
tista, an Italian natural philosopher, born 
1716, died 1781; was appointed professor 
of experimental physics at Turin, 1748; 
author of a treatise on Natural and Arti¬ 
ficial Electricity, Letters on Electricity, 
&c. He contributed several articles to the 
Transactions of the Royal Society of Lon¬ 
don, and was commissioned in 1759 to mea¬ 
sure an arc of the meridian in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Turin. 

Beccles (bek'lz), a town of England in 
Suffolk, 33 miles n.n.e. from Ipswich, on 
the right bank of the Waveney; has a fine 
church of the fourteenth century, and a good 
trade coastwise. Pop. 1891, 6669. 

Becerra (be-ther'a), Gaspar, Spanish 
painter and sculptor, born 1520, died 1570. 
He studied under Michel Angelo at Rome, 
and is credited with the chief share in the 
establishment of the fine arts in Spain. 

Beche (bash), Sir Henry de la, an En¬ 
glish geologist, born 1796, died 1855. He 
founded the geological survey of Great 
Britain, which was soon undertaken by the 
government, De la Beche being appointed 
director-general. He also founded the Jer- 
myn Street Museum of Economic or Practi¬ 
cal Geology, and the School of Mines. His 
principal works are: Geology of Jamaica, 
Classification of European Rocks, Geologi¬ 
cal Manual, Researches in Theoretical Geo¬ 
logy, Geology of Cornwall, Devon, and West 
Somerset, &c. 

Beche-de-Mer (bash-de-mar). See Tre- 
pang. 

Becher (beA'er), Johann Joachim, Ger- 
429 


man chemist, born in 1635, died in Lon¬ 
don 1682. He became a professor at 
Mainz; was elected a member of the Im¬ 
perial council at Vienna, 1660, but fell into 
disgrace and subsequently resided in various 
parts of Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden, 
and Great Britain. His chief work, Phy- 
sica Subterranea, containing many of the 
fanciful theories of the alchemists, was pub¬ 
lished in 1669, and enlarged in 1681. 

Bechstein (beA'stln), Johann Matthaus, 
German naturalist, born in 1757, died in 
1822. He wrote a popular natural history 
of Germany, and various works on forestry, 
in which subject his labours were highly 
valuable. In Britain he is best known by 
a treatise on cage birds. 

Bechuanas, Betchuanas (bech-wan'az), 
a widely spread race of people inhabiting 
the central region of South Africa north 
of Cape Colony. They belong to the great 
Kaffre stem, and are divided into tribal 
sections. They live chiefly by husbandry 
and cattle rearing, and they work with some 
skill in iron, copper, ivory, and skins. They 
have been much harassed by Boers and 
others, and this led them to seek British 
protection. From 1878 to 1880 South Be- 
chuanaland was partly administered by Brit¬ 
ish officers; and inl884 andl885 great part 
of the rest of their territory was brought un¬ 
der British influence, the farthest northern 
portion of it, however, reaching to the Zam¬ 
besi, being only a protectorate. The area is 
180,000 sq. m., and pop. 478,000. Bechua- 
naland lies between the Transvaal on the 
east and the German Protectorate on the 
west. It is generally speaking flat or only 
slightly undulating, and is essentially a 
grass country, all the grasses bein_r of a sub¬ 
stantial and nutritious quality which stands 
well against drought. Surface water is 
scarce, but there is an extraordinary under¬ 
ground supply which no doubt will be turned 
to profitable account. Some parts are wooded 
and well watered. Gold, coal, and copper 
have been found. 

Beck er, Wilhelm Adolf, German archae¬ 
ologist, born at Dresden 1796, died at Meis¬ 
sen 1846. In 1828 he became a teacher at 
Meissen, in 1837 was appointed extraordi¬ 
nary professor of classical archaeology at 
Leipsic, and in 1842 ordinary professor. 
Best known works: Gallus, oder roinische 
Scenen aus der Zeit Augusts, and Charik- 
les, oder Bilder altgriechischer Sitte, which 
reproduce in a wonderful manner the social 
life of old Rome and Greece. 



BECKET-BED. 


Beck'et, Thomas (the form A Becket is 
also common), archbishop of Canterbury, 
born in London 1117 or 1119, assassinated 
in Canterbury Cathedral, 29th Dec. 1170. 
He was educated at Oxford and Paris, 
and was sent, by the favour of Theobald, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, to study civil 
law at Bologna in Italy, and on his re¬ 
turn made Archdeacon of Canterbury and 
Provost of Beverley. In 1158 Henry II. 
appointed him high-chancellor and precep¬ 
tor to his son, Prince Henry—the first in¬ 
stance after the Conquest of a high office 
being filled by a native Englishman. At 
this period he was a complete courtier, con¬ 
forming in every respect to the humour of 
the king. He was, in fact, the king’s 
prime companion, held splendid levees, and 
courted popular applause. On the death of 
Theobald, 1162, he was consecrated arch¬ 
bishop, when he affected an extraordinary 
austerity of character, and appeared as a 
zealous champion of the church against the 
aggressions of the king, whose policy was 
to have the clergy in subordination to the 
civil power. Becket was forced to assent 
to the ‘Constitutions of Clarendon,’ but a 
series of bitter conflicts with the king fol¬ 
lowed, ending in Becket’s flight to France, 
when he appealed to the pope, by whom 
he was supported. After much negotiation 
a sort of reconciliation took place in 1170, 
and Becket returned to England, resumed 
his office, and renewed his defiance of the 
royal authority. A rash hint from the king 
induced four barons, Beginald Fitz-Urse, 
William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and 
llichard Breto, to go to Canterbury and 
murder the archbishop while at vespers in 
the cathedral. He was canonized in 1172, 
and the splendid shrine erected at Canter¬ 
bury for his remains was, for three cen¬ 
turies, a favourite place of pilgrimage. x 

Beckett, Gilbert Abbot A’. See A 
Beckett. 

Beck'ford, William, an English writer 
famous in his time for his immense wealth 
and his eccentricities. He was born at 
Fonthill, his father’s estate in Wiltshire, in 
1759. In 1770 the death of his father left 
him in the possession of £1,000,000 of 
money, and an income of £100,000 a year. 
He travelled much, and for some time lived 
in Portugal. He expended an enormous 
sum in building and rebuilding Fonthill 
Abbey, near Salisbury, which he filled with 
rare and expensive works of art. Here he 
lived in seclusion for twenty years. In 


1822 the abbey and greater part of its con* 
tents were sold, and he retired to Bath, 
where, with a much-diminished fortune, 
but one amply sufficient, he lived till 1844. 
His literary fame rests upon his eastern tale 
Vathek, which he wrote in French, and 
a translation of which into English (said 
to be by a clergyman) appeared at London 
without his knowledge in 1784. The tale 
is still much read, and was highly com¬ 
mended by Lord Byron. He had two 
daughters, one of whom became Duchess of 
Hamilton, and brought his valuable library 
to this family. — William Beckford, his 
father, a London merchant and West In¬ 
dian proprieter, was famous for a spirited 
speech made to George III. when Lord 
Mayor of London. 

Beckmann, Johann, German writer on 
the industrial arts and agriculture, born 
1739, died 1811. He was for a short time 
professor of physics and natural history at 
St. Petersburg, and afterwards for almost 
forty-five years professor of philosophy and 
economy in Gottingen. His History of 
Inventions is well known in the English 
translation of it. 

Beckx (beks), Pierre Jean, general of 
the order of Jesuits, born near Louvain, 
Belgium, 1795, died 1887. The success of 
the Jesuits, especially in non-Catholic coun¬ 
tries, was greatly due to his tact and energy. 

Becquerel (bek-rel), Antoine C6sar, 
French physicist, born 1788, died 1878. 
He served as an officer of engineers, and 
retired in 1815, after which he devoted 
himself to the study of electricity, especially 
electro-chemistry. He refuted the ‘ theory 
of contact’ by which Volta explained the 
action of his pile or battery. Becquerel 
may be considered one of the creators of 
electro-chemistry. 

Becse (bech'e), Old, a town of Hungary, 
48 miles s. of Szegedin, on the right bank 
of the Theiss. Pop. 15,000.— New Becse, 
a market-town on the left bank of the 
Theiss, 5 miles e. of Old Becse. Pop. 7000, 
or, with the immediately adjoining village 
of Franyova, about 15,000. Both towns 
carry on an extensive trade in grain. 

Becskerek (bech'ke-rek), a town of South 
Hungary, on the Bega, 45 miles s.w. from 
Temesvar, with which it communicates by 
the Bega Canal. Trade in cattle and agri¬ 
cultural produce. Pop. 20,000. 

Bed, Bedstead, an article of furniture to 
sleep or rest on. The term bed properly is 
applied to a large flat bag filled with fea* 

430 



BED— 

thefs, down, wool, or other soft material, 
and also to a mattress supported on spiral 
springs or form of elastic chains or wire- 
work which is raised from the ground on a 
bedstead. The term, however, sometimes 
includes the bedstead or frame for support¬ 
ing the bed. The forms of beds are neces¬ 
sarily very various—every period and coun¬ 
try having its own form of bed. Air-beds 
and water-beds (which see) are much used 
by invalids. 

Bed, in geol., a layer or stratum, usually 
a stratum of considerable thickness. 

Beda. See Bede. 

Bedarieux (ba-dar-i-ew), a thriving town, 
Southern France, dep. H^rault, situated on 
the Orb. Pop. 6923. 

Bed-bug. See Bug. 

Bed-chamber, Lords of the, officers of the 
royal household of Britain under the groom 
of the stole. They are twelve in number, 
and wait a week each in turn. In the case 
of a queen regnant these posts are occupied 
by ladies, called Ladies of the Bed-cham¬ 
ber. 

Beddoes (bed'oz), Thomas, physician and 
author, born 1760; educated at Oxford, 
London, and Edinburgh. After taking his 
doctor’s degree and visiting Paris, he was 
appointed professor of chemistry at Oxford. 
There he published some excellent chemical 
treatises, and Observations on the Calculus, 
Sea-scurvy, Consumption, Catarrh, and 
Fever. His expressed sympathy with the 
French revolutionists led to his retirement 
from his professorship in 1792, soon after 
which he published his Observations on the 
Nature of Demonstrative Evidence, and the 
exceedingly popular History of Isaac Jen¬ 
kins. In 1794 he married a sister of Maria 
Edgeworth; and in 1798, with the pecuniary 
aid of Wedgwood, opened a pneumatic in¬ 
stitution for curing phthisical and other 
diseases by inhalation of gases. It speedily 
became an ordinary hospital, but was note¬ 
worthy as connected with the discovery of 
the properties of nitrous oxide, and as 
having been superintended by the young 
Humphry Davy. Beddoes’ essays on Con¬ 
sumption (1779) and on Fever (1807), and 
his Hygeia (3 vols. 1807) had a high con¬ 
temporary repute. He died in 1808. 

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, dramatist, 
born 1803; published the Bride’s Tragedy 
while an undergraduate at Oxford, and led 
an eccentric life, dying in 1849. His work 
was largely fragmentary, but his posthumous 
Death’s Jest-book, or the Fool’s Tragedy 

431 


BEDELL. 

(1850), received the high praise of such 
judges as Landor and Browning. His Poems, 
with memoir, appeared in 1851. 

Bede, Beda, or Bjida, known as the Ven¬ 
erable, Anglo-Saxon scholar, born in 672 or 
673 in the neighbourhood of Monkwear- 
mouth, county Durham; educated at St. 
Peter’s monastery, Wearmouth; took dea¬ 
con’s orders in his nineteenth year at St. 
Paul’s monastery, Jarrow, and was ordained 
priest at thirty by John of Beverley, bishop 
of Hexham. His life was spent in studious 
seclusion, the chief events in it being the 
production of homilies, hymns, lives of saints, 
commentaries, and works in history, chrono¬ 
logy, grammar, &c. He was the most learned 
Englishman of his day, and in some sense the 
father of English history, his most important 
work being his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis 
Anglorum (or Ecclesiastical History of Eng¬ 
land), afterwards translated by King Alfred 
into Anglo-Saxon. Besides his familiarity 
with Latin, he knew Greek and had some 
acquaintance with Hebrew. Most of his 
writings were on scriptural and ecclesiastical 
subjects, but he also wrote on chronology, 
physical science, grammar, &c., and had con¬ 
siderable ability in the writing of Latin 
verse. He died in 735, an interesting re¬ 
cord of his closing days being preserved in 
a letter by his pupil Cuthbert. His body 
was after a lapse of time removed from 
Jarrow church to Durham, but of the shrine 
which formerly inclosed them only the Latin 
inscription re¬ 
mains, ending 
with the verse— 

‘ Hac sunt in 
fossa Bedae ven- 
erabilis ossa.’ 

Bedeguar, or 
Bedegar (bed'- 
e-gar), a spongy 
excrescence or 
gall, sometimes 
termed sweet- 
brier sponge, 
found on various 
species of roses, 
and produced by 
several insects as 
receptacles for their eggs, especially by the 
Cynips rosce. Once thought a diuretic and 
vermifuge. 

Bedell', William, a celebrated Irish 
bishop, born in Essex in 1570. In 1604 he 
went to Venice as chaplain to Sir Henry 
Wotton, and remained eight years. After 



a a , Bedeguar on the Rose. 




BEDER WARE-BEDOUINS. 


holding the living of Horingsheath from 
1615-27 he became provost of Trinity Col¬ 
lege, Dublin, and in 1629 Bishop of Kilmore 
and Ardagh, though he resigned the latter 
of the united sees in 1630. He set himself 
to reform abuses and promote the spread of 
Protestantism, procured the translation of 
the Old Testament into Irish, and by his 
tact and wisdom conciliated the adherents 
of both creeds. He underwent a brief im¬ 
prisonment on the breaking out of the re¬ 
bellion in 1641, and died in the year follow¬ 
ing. His biography was written by Bishop 
Burnet. 

Be'der Ware. See Bidery. 

Bedford, a pari, and municip. borough, 
England, county town of Bedfordshire, on 
the Ouse. The chief buildings are the law 
courts, a range of public schools, a large 
infirmary, county jail, &c., and the churches. 
The town is rich in charities and educational 
institutions, the most prominent being the 
Bedford Charity, embracing grammar and 
other schools, and richly endowed. There 
is an extensive manufactory of agricultural 
implements; lace is also made, and there is 
a good trade. John Bunyan was born at 
Elstow, a village near the town, and it was 
at Bedford that he lived, preached, and was 
imprisoned. Bedford sends one member to 
Parliament. Pop. 28,023.— Bedfordshire, 
or Beds, the county, is bounded by North¬ 
ampton, Bucks, Herts, Cambridge, and Hun¬ 
tingdon; area, 294,983 acres, of which 260,000 
are under tillage or in permanent pasture. 
Chalk hills, forming a portion of the Chil- 
terns, cross it on the s.; N. of this is a belt 
of sand; the soil of the vale of Bedford, con¬ 
sisting mostly of clay and loam, is very fer¬ 
tile; and the meadows on the Ouse, Ivel, 
and other streams furnish rich pasturage. 
Two-thirds of the soil is under tillage. Be¬ 
sides the usual cereal and other crops, culi¬ 
nary vegetables are extensively cultivated 
for the London market. Principal manu¬ 
factures : agricultural implements, and 
straw-plait for bats, which is made up prin¬ 
cipally at Dunstable and Luton. The county 
returns two members to the House of Com¬ 
mons. Pop. 1891, 160,729. 

Bedford, John, Duke of, one of the 
younger sons of Henry IV., king of Eng¬ 
land; famous as a statesman and a warrior. 
He defeated the French fleet in 1416, com¬ 
manded an expedition to Scotland in 1417, 
and was lieutenant of England during the 
absence of Henry V. in France. On the 
king’s death he became regent of France, 


and for several years his policy was as suc¬ 
cessful as it was able and vigorous, the 
victory of Verneuil in 1424 attesting his 
generalship. The greatest stain on his 
memory is his execution of the Maid of 
Orleans (Joan of Arc) in 1431. He died in 
1435 at Rouen, and was buried in the cathe¬ 
dral of that city. 

Bedford Level, a large tract of marshy 
land in England, of about 400,000 acres 
total area, comprising 63,000 in Norfolk, 
30,000 in Suffolk, 50,000 in Huntingdon, 
the Peterborough fen in Northampton, the 
Holland district in Lincolnshire, and most 
of the isle of Ely in Cambridge. It derives 
its name from Francis, earl of Bedford, who 
in the seventeenth century expended large 
sums of money in attempting to drain it. 
A great part of the Level is under cultiva¬ 
tion, and produces grain, flax, and cole¬ 
seed; the remainder yields a winter harvest 
of wild fowl for the London market. 

Bed'lam, a corruption of Bethlehem 
(Hospital), the name of a religious house 
in London, converted, after the general 
suppression by Henry VIII., into a hos¬ 
pital for lunatics. The original Bedlam 
stood in Bishopsgate Street, its modern suc¬ 
cessor is in St. George’s Fields. The lunatics 
were at one time treated as little better than 
wild beasts, and hence Bedlam came to be 
typical of any scene of wild confusion. The 
average number of patients is about 300. 

Bedlis. See Betlis. 

Bedmar’, Alphonso de la Cueva, Span¬ 
ish cardinal, born in 1572, was sent in 1607 
by Philip III. as ambassabor to Venice, and 
rendered himself famous by an alleged con¬ 
spiracy with the Milanese and Neapolitan 
governors to overthrow the republic of Ven¬ 
ice and subject it to Spanish domination 
(1618). On its discovery Bedmar escaped, 
and was appointed governor of the Low* 
Countries by the king and cardinal by the 
pope. Died 1655. The plot is the subject 
of Otway’s Venice Preserved. 

Bed of Justice. See Lit de Justice. 

Bedouins (bed-u-enz'; Arabic Bedawi , pi. 
Bedudn ,‘ dwellers of the desert ’), a Moham¬ 
medan people of Arab race inhabiting 
chiefly the deserts of Arabia, Syria, Egypt, 
and North Africa. They lead a nomadic 
existence in tents, huts, caverns, and ruins, 
associating in families under sheiks or in 
tribes under emirs. In respect of occupation 
they are only shepherds, herdsmen, and 
horse-breeders, varying the monotony of 
pastoral life by raiding on each other and 

432 



BED-SORES-BEE. 


plundering 1 unprotected travellers whom 
they consider trespassers. They are ignor¬ 
ant of writing and books, their knowledge 
being purely traditional and mainly genea¬ 
logical. They are lax in morals, and unre¬ 
liable even in respect of the code of honour 
attributed to them in poetry and fiction. In 
stature they are undersized, and, though 
active, they are not strong. The ordinary 
dress of the men is a long shirt girt at the 
loins, a black or red and yellow handker¬ 
chief for the head, 
and sandals; of 
the women, loose 
drawers, a long 1 
shirt, and a large 
dark-blue shawl 
covering the head 
and figure. The 
lance is the fa¬ 
vourite weapon. 

Bed-sores, a 
troublesome kind 
of sores liable to 
appear on patients 
long confined to 
bed, and either 
unable or not al¬ 
lowed to change 
their position, and 
occurring at the 
parts chiefly 
pressed by the 
weight of the 
body. 

Bedstead. See Bed. 

Bedstraw, the popular name of the differ¬ 
ent species of Galium , a genus of plants, 
order Rubiaceae. The Yellow Bedstraw or 
Cheese-rennet ( G . verum), the flowers and 
roots of which afford yellow and red dyes, 
is rare in New England. Goose-grass [G. 
aparlne) is a well-known member of the 
genus, the juice of which has been used in 
lepra and other cutaneous diseases. 

Bee, the common name given to a large 
family of hymenopterous or membranous¬ 
winged insects, of which the most important 
is the common hive or honey bee [Apis 
mellifica). It belongs to the warmer parts 
of the Eastern Hemisphere, but is now natu¬ 
ralized in the Western. A hive commonly 
consists of one mother or queen, from 600 
to 800 males or drones, and from 15,000 to 
20,000 working bees, formerly termed neu¬ 
ters, but now known to be imperfectly- 
developed females. The last-mentioned, 
the smallest, have twelve joints to their 
vol. i. 433 


antennae, and six abdominal rings, and are 
provided with a sting; there is, on the out¬ 
side of the hind-legs, a smooth hollow, 
edged with hairs, called the basket, in which 
the kneaded pollen or bee-bread, the food 
of the larvae, is stored for transit. The 
queen has the same characteristics, but is of 
larger size, especially in the abdomen; she 
has also a sting. The males, or drones, 
differ from both the preceding by having 
thirteen joints to the antennae; a rounded 

head, with larger 
eyes, elongated 
and united at the 
summit; and no 
stings. According 
to Huber the 
working-bees are 
themselves di¬ 
visible into two 
classes: one, the 
cirieres , devoted 
to the collection 
of provisions, &c.; 
the other, smaller 
and more delicate, 
employed exclu¬ 
sively within the 
hive in rearing 
the young. The 
mouth of the bee 
is adapted for 
both masticatory 
and suctorial pur¬ 
poses, the honey 
being conveyed thence to the anterior 
stomach or crop, communicating with a 
second stomach in which alone a diges¬ 
tive process can be traced. The queen, 
whose sole office is to propagate the spe¬ 
cies, has two large ovaries, consisting of 
a great number of small cavities, each con¬ 
taining sixteen or seventeen eggs. The 
inferior half-circles, except the first and 
last, on the abdomen of working-bees, have 
each on their inner surface two cavities, 
where the wax, secreted by the bee from its 
saccharine food, is formed in layers, and 
comes out from between the abdominal rings. 
Respiration takes place by means of air- 
tubes which branch out to all parts of the 
body, the bee being exceedingly sensitive to 
an impure atmosphere. Of the organs of 
sense the most important are the antennas, 
deprivation of these resulting in a species of 
derangement. The majority of entomolo¬ 
gists regard their function as in the first 
place auditory, but they are exceedingly 

28 




























BEE — 

sensitive to tactual impressions, and are 
apparently the principal means of mutual 
communication. Bees undergo perfect meta¬ 
morphosis, the young appearing first as 
larvae, then changing to pupae, from which 
the imagosor perfect insects spring. Whether 
the offspring are to be female or male is 
said to be dependent upon the contact or 
absence of contact of the egg with the 
impregnating fluid received from the male 
and stored in a special sac communicating 
with the oviduct, unfertilized eggs produc¬ 
ing males. The further question whether 
the offspring shall be queens or workers is 
resolved by the influence of environment 
upon function. The enlargement of a cell 
to the size of a royal chamber and the 
nourishment of its inmate with a special 
kind of food appear to be sufficient to trans¬ 
form an ordinary working-bee larva into a 
fully-developed female or queen-bee. The 
season of fecundation occurs about the be¬ 
ginning of summer, and the laying begins 
immediately afterwards, and continues until 
autumn; in the spring as many as 12,000 
eggs may be laid in twenty-four days. 
Those laid at the commencement of fine 
weather all belong to the working sort, and 
hatch at the end of four days. The larvae 
acquire their perfect state in about twelve 
days, and the cells are then immediately 
fitted up for the reception of new eggs. The 
eggs for producing males are laid two months 
later, and those for the females immediately 
afterwards. This succession of generations 
forms so many distinct communities, which, 
when increased beyond a certain degree, 
leave the parent hive to found a new colony 
elsewhere. Thus three or four swarms 
sometimes leave a hive in a season. A good 
swarm is said to weigh at least 6 or 8 
pounds. Besides the common bee (A. melli- 
fica) there are the A. fasciata, domesticated 
in Egypt, the A. ligustica, or Ligurian bee 
of Italy and Greece, introduced into Eng¬ 
land, &c. See Apiary. 

The humble-bees, or bumble-bees, of 
which about forty species are found in Bri¬ 
tain and over sixty in N. America, belong 
to the genus Bombus, which is almost world¬ 
wide in its distribution. Of these species 
solitary females which have survived the 
winter commence constructing small nests 
when the weather begins to be warm enough; 
some of them going deep into the earth in dry 
banks, others preferring heaps of stone or 
gravel, and others choosing always some bed 
of dry moss. In the nest the bee collects a 


BEECH. 

mass of pollen and in this lays some eggs. 'Bhe 
cells in these nests are not the work of the 
old bee, but are formed by the young insects 
similarly to the cocoons of silk-worms; and 
when the perfect insect is released from 
them by the old bee, which gnaws off their 
tops, they are employed as honey-cups. The 
humble-bees, however, do not store honey 
for the winter, those which survive till the 
cold weather leaving the nest and pene¬ 
trating the earth, or taking up some other 
sheltered position, and remaining there till 
the spring. The first brood consists of 
workers, and successive broods are pro¬ 
duced during the summer. The experi¬ 
ment of domesticating different kinds of 
wild bees has been tried with no satisfactory 
results. Some bees, from their manner of 
nesting, are known as ‘mason bees,’ ‘car¬ 
penter bees,’ and ‘upholsterer bees.’ Some 
of these bees (genus Osmia) cement par¬ 
ticles of sand or gravel together with a 
viscid substance in forming their nests; 
others make burrows in wood. The leaf- 
cutter or upholsterer bee (genus Megachile) 
lines its burrow with bits of leaf cut out in 
regular shapes. 

Beech ( Fagus ), the common name of trees 
of the nat. order Cupuliferae, well known 
in various parts of the world, including New 
Zealand and Terra del Fuego. The Fagus 
sylratica , a common European forest-tree, 
sometimes reaches a height of 120 feet, with 
a diameter of 4 or more, is known by its 
waved and somewhat oval leaves, its trian¬ 
gular fruit inclosed by pairs in a prickly 
husk, and by its smooth and silvery bark. 
The wood is hard and brittle, and if exposed 
to the air liable soon to decay. It is, how¬ 
ever, peculiarly useful to cabinet-makers 
and turners, carpenters’ planes, furniture, 
sabots, &c., being made of it; and it is dur¬ 
able under water for piles and mill-sluices. 
The fruit or beech-mast , when dried and 
powdered, may be made into a wholesome 
bread; it has also occasionally been roasted 
and used as a substitute for coffee, and 
yields a sweet and palatable oil used by the 
lower classes of Silesia instead of butter. 
Beech-mast is, however, chiefly used as food 
for swine, poultry, and other animals. The 
leaves of the beech-tree collected in the 
autumn, before they have been injured by 
the frosts, are in some places used to stuff 
mattresses. The North American white 
beech is identical with the European species. 
Red-leaved varieties are now common, the 
American E. ferruginea being of this colour. 

434 



Beecher — bee-hawk moth. 


Beecher (be'cher), Henry Ward, an 
eminent American preacher, son of Lyman 
Beecher (a distinguished clergyman, born 
1775, died 1863), born in Connecticut 1813; 
was minister at Lawrenceburg, Ind., 1837, 



Henry Ward Beecher. 


and of Plymouth Congregational Church, 
Brooklyn, New York, in 1847. The latter 
pulpit he continued to occupy till his death 
in 1887, though in 1882 he ceased his for¬ 
mal connection with the Congregationalists 

o o 

on the ground of disbelief in eternal pun¬ 
ishment. From 1861 to 1863 he was editor 
of the Independent, and for about ten years 
after 1870, of the Christian Union. He was 
also the author of a considerable number of 
works, of which his Lectures to Young Men 
(1850), Life Thoughts (1858), Lectures on 
Preaching (1872-74), and the weekly issues 
of his sermons, commanded wide circulation. 
Few contemporary preachers appealed to as 
large and diverse a public. His brothers 
Charles, Edward, and Thomas, have all dis¬ 
tinguished themselves as Congregational 
clergymen. His sister Catherine Esther 
(born 1800, died 1878) did much for the 
education of women, and wrote on this sub¬ 
ject and on domestic economy and kindred 
subjects. 

Beecher-Stowe. See Stowe. 

Beechey (be'chi), Admiral Frederick 
William, son of Sir William Beechey the 
painter, born in 1796. In 1818 he accom¬ 
panied Franklin in an expedition to dis¬ 
cover the north-west passage, and the fol¬ 
lowing year took part in a similar enterprise 
with Parry. In 1821 he was commissioned, 
with his brother H. W. Beechey, to examine 
by land the coasts of North Africa from 
Tripoli eastward, an account of which ap¬ 
peared in 1828. From 1825 to 1828 he was 


commander of the Blossom in another Arctic 
expedition, by way of the Pacific and Beh¬ 
ring’s Strait, of which a narrative was pub¬ 
lished in 1831. In 1854 he was made rear- 
admiral of the blue; he died in 1856. 

Beechey, Sir William, a fashionable por¬ 
trait-painter, born 1753, died 1839. In 1772 
elected Royal Academician, and knighted 
in acknowledgment of his large picture of 
a cavalry review, including portraits of 
George III., the Prince of Wales, &c. The 
complete catalogue of his works includes 
portraits of nearly all the leading person¬ 
ages of his day, but artistically he does not 
belong to the first rank of portrait painters. 

Bee-eaters, a family of Fissirostral Pas¬ 
serine birds, distributed over Africa, India, 
the Moluccas, and Australia, chiefly known 
in Europe by the Merops Apiaster, or com¬ 
mon bee-eater, a summer visitant to Russia 
and the Mediterranean borders. It is rare 
in Britain. For the most part they nest in 
colonies, depositing their eggs like the sand- 
martins, at the end of a tunnel sometimes 
8 or 9 feet long. They are frequently killed 
for their plumage, which is brownish-red 
and yellow above, pale-blue on the forehead, 
yellow at the breast, and green at the wings, 
tail, and under parts. 

Beef-eaters (usually but erroneously con¬ 
sidered a corruption of Fr. buffetiers), yeo¬ 
men of the guard of the sovereign of Great 
Britain, stationed by the sideboard at great 
royal dinners, and dressed after the fashion 
of the time of Henry VII.—Also a name 
for certain African insessorial birds (genus 
Buphaga ) which feed on the larvae embed¬ 
ded in the hides of buffaloes or other large 
animals. 

Beef-tea, a nourishing beverage for inva¬ 
lids, which may be prepared from lean beef 
by chopping it small, putting it with some 
cold water into a sauce-pan and letting it 
simmer for two or three hours (or more), 
also skimming off the fat. It is easy of di¬ 
gestion, and very nutritious. 

Beef-wood, the timber of some species of 
Australian trees belonging to the genus Ca- 
suarina, of a reddish colour, hard, and close- 
grained, with dark and whitish streaks, 
chiefly used in fine ornamental work. 

Bee-hawk, a name given to the honey- 
buzzard ( Pernis apivorus), which preys on 
hymenopterous insects. 

Bee-hawk Moth, the name of two British 
species of moths (Macroglossa bombyliformis 
and M. fuciformis) having translucent wings 
and hairy bodies. 




BEEHiVE-HOUSES-BEET. 


Beehive-houses, the archaeological name 
of primitive dwellings of unknown antiquity 
found in Scotland and Ireland. They are 
conical in shape with a hole at the apex. 
Some of them are ascribed to the stone age 
by Lubbock and others, but they are more 
generally assigned to the period from the 
seventh to the twelfth century. 

Beejapoor. See Bejapoor. 

Beelzebub (be-el'ze-bub; Hebrew, ‘the 
god of flies’), the supreme God of the Syro- 
Phoenician peoples, in whose honour the 
Philistines had a temple at Ekron. With 
his name may be compared the epithet 
‘ averter of flies ’ applied to Zeus and later 
to Hercules. The 
use of Beelzebul 
in the New Testa¬ 
ment has been the 
subject of much 
discussion, some 
asserting it to be 
an opprobrious 
form of Beelze¬ 
bub, meaning the 
* lord of dung,’ 
others translating 
it ‘ lord of the 
dwelling,’ and 
others again find¬ 
ing in the change 
fr m b to l only a natural linguistic modi¬ 
fication. 

Beer. See Ale and Brewing. 

Beerbhoom. See Birbhum. 

Beershe'ba (now Bir-es-Seba, ‘the well 
of the oath’), the place where Abraham 
made a covenant with Abimelech, and in 
common speech representative of the south¬ 
ernmost limit of Palestine, near which it is 
situated. It is now a mere heap of ruins 
near two large and five smaller wells, though 
it was a place of some importance down to 
the period of the Crusades. 

Bees’-wax, a solid fatty substance secreted 
by bees, and containing in its purified state 
three chemical principles—myricin, cerin, 
and cerolein. It is not collected from plants, 
but elaborated from saccharine food in the 
body of the bee. (See Bee.) It is used for 
the manufacture of candles, for modelling, 
and in many minor processes. See Wax. 

Beet ( Beta ), a genus of plants, nat. order 
Chenopodiaceae, distinguished by its fruit 
being inclosed in a tough woody or spongy 
five-lobed enlarged calyx. Two species only 
are known in general cultivation, namely, 
the sea-beet (B. maritlma) and the garden 


beet {B. vulgaris). The former is a tough- 
rooted perennial, common on many parts 
of the British coast and sometimes culti¬ 
vated for its leaves, which are an excellent 
substitute for spinach. Of the garden beet, 
which differs from the last in being of only 
biennial duration and in forming a tender 
fleshy root, two principal forms are known 
to cultivators, the chard beet and the com¬ 
mon beet. In the chard beet the roots are 
small, white, and rather tough, and the 
leaves are furnished with a broad, fleshy 
midrib (chard), employed as a vegetable by 
the French, who dress the ribs like sea-kale 
under the name of poiree. Some writers 

regard this as a 
peculiar species, 
and call it Beta 
cicla or hortensis. 
The common beet 
includes all the 
fleshy-rooted va¬ 
rieties, such as red 
beet (with a fleshy 
large carrot- 
shaped root), yel¬ 
low beet, sugar- 
beet, mangel-wur¬ 
zel, &c. For gar¬ 
den purposes the 
best is the red 
beet of Castelnaudary, so called from a 
town in the s.w. of France. The beet re¬ 
quires a rich light soil, and being a native 
of the Mediterranean region is impatient 
of severe cold, requiring to be taken up in 
the beginning of winter and packed in dry 
sand, or in pits like potatoes, the succulent 
leaves having been first removed. Red beet 
is principally used at table, but if eaten in 
great quantity is said to be injurious. The 
beet may be taken out of the ground for 
use about the end of August, but it does 
not attain its full size and perfection till 
the month of October. A good beer may be 
brewed from the beet, and it yields a spirit 
of good quality. From the white beet the 
French, during the wars with Napoleon I., 
succeeded in preparing sugar, that article, 
as British colonial produce, having been 
prohibited in France. Since that time, with 
the increase of chemical and technical know¬ 
ledge, the making of beet-sugar has become 
an important industry in France, Germany, 
Austria, Russia, Belgium, and Holland. It 
has even been tried in England, and the 
failure of attempts to produce beet-sugar on 
a large scale there seems to have been mainly 

436 



Beehive-houses at Cahernamacturech, co. Kerry. 


















BEET-BEETLE-BEGAS. 


due to artificial conditions of trade compe¬ 
tition. 

Beet-beetle (Silpha opaca, and S. atrdta), 
the name of two beetles the larva of which, 
a little black maggot, injures beet and 
mangel-wurzel by feeding on the leaves. 

Beet-fly (Anthomyia Beta), a fly resem¬ 
bling the common fly but of smaller size, 
which deposits its eggs in the leaves of man- 
gel-wurzels and other beets. The larvae, 
feeding on the tissues, raise bullae or blisters, 
which, when numerous, injure the plant. 

Beethoven (ba'to-vn), Ludwig van, a 
great German musical composer, born at 
Bonn, 16th Dec. 1770, studied under his 
father (a tenor singer), Pfeiffer, Van der 
Eden, and Neefe; began to publish in 



Ludwig van Beethoven. 


1783; became assistant court organist in 
1785; and was sent by the Elector of Co¬ 
logne to Vienna in 1792, where he was 
the pupil of Haydn and Albrechtsberger, 
and acquired a high reputation for piano¬ 
forte extemporization before the merit of his 
written compositions was fully understood. 
In or near Vienna almost all his subsequent 
life was spent, his artistic tour in North 
Germany in 1796 being the most important 
break. He died March 27, 1827. His 
later life was rendered somewhat morbid by 
his deafness, of which the first signs ap¬ 
peared in 1797. He had the head of Jove 
on the body of Bacchus, and there was in 
him a strong dash of what in a lesser man 
would be termed insanity, with an alterna¬ 
tion between the highest elevation of genius 
and the conduct of a fool or buffoon. His 
best works were published after 1800, two 
periods being observable: the first from 1800 


to 1814, comprising Symphonies 2-8; the 
opera Fidelio (originally Leonore), the music 
to Goethe’s Egmont, and the overtures to 
Prometheus, Coriolanus, King Stephen and 
Fidelio; the second (in which the poetic 
school of musicians find the germs of the 
subsequent development through Schumann, 
Wagner, and Liszt) comprising the 9th Sym¬ 
phony, the Missa Solemnis, and the Sonatas 
Op. 101, 102, 106, 109, 110, and 111. 

Beetle, a name often used as synonymous 
with the term Coleoptera, but restricted by 
others to include all those insects that ha\e 
their wings protected by hard cases or 
sheaths, called elytra. Beetles vary in si e 
from a mere point to the bulk of a man s 
fist, the largest, the elephant beetle of S. 
America, being 4 inches long. The so- 
called ‘ black beetles ’ of kitchens and cellars 
are not properly beetles at all, but cock¬ 
roaches, and of the order Orthoptera. 

Beetle-stone, a nodule of coprolitic iron¬ 
stone, so named from the resemblance of 
the inclosed coprolite to the body and limb 
of a beetle. 

Beet-root. See Beet. 

Befa'na (Ital., corrupted from Epiphania, 
‘Epiphany’), in Italy, a legendary housewife 
who, being too busy to see the wise men of 
the East on their way to the infant Christ, 
has been looking out for them ever since, 
being ignorant that they returned home 
another way. She is particularly concerned 
with children, and on Twelfth-night stock¬ 
ings are hung out to receive her gifts. The 
name is also given to a ragged doll which 
appears in the streets and shops on the eve 
and day of Epiphany. 

Beffroi, a wooden tower on wheels for¬ 
merly used in sieges. 

Beg, or Bey (‘prince’ or ‘lord’), in Turkey, 
agovei’nor; or more particularly the gover¬ 
nor of a sanjak. Sometimes given loosely 
to superior officers and persons of rank. It 
ranks between effendi and pasha. 

Bega, Cornelis, a Dutch painter and en¬ 
graver, born at Harlem in 162<», one of the 
ablest pupils of Adrian von Ostade. His best 
paintings are in the Berlin Museum, and 
the Pinakothek at Munich. He died of the 
plague in 1664. 

Begas, Karl, German historical and por¬ 
trait painter, born 1794, died 1854. He at 
first followed the German pre-Raphaelites 
in style, but afterwards treated history and 
genre in the Diisseldorf romantic school. 
He was long court painter and professor at 
Berlin Academy, and painted the portraits 



BEGASS 


BEHISTUN. 


many eminent personages. In biblical 
subjects he was highly successful, as in the 
Exposing of Moses, Christ prophesying the 
Fall of Jerusalem, &c. 

Begass. See Bagasse. 

Beggar-my-neighbour, a game at cards 
usually played by two persons, who share 
the pack, and, laying their shares face down¬ 
wards, turn up a card alternately until an 
honour appears. The honour has to be paid 
for by the less fortunate player at the rate 
of four cards for an ace, three for a king, 
two for a queen, and one for a knave; but 
if in the course of payment another honour 
should be turned up the late creditor be¬ 
comes himself a debtor to the amount of its 
value. 

Beggars. See Vagrants. 

Beghards (beg'ardz), or Beguards, mem¬ 
bers of a religious body which arose in Flan¬ 
ders in the thirteenth century. They dis¬ 
claimed the authority of princes, and refused 
to submit unconditionally to the rules of any 
order, but bound themselves to a life of ex¬ 
treme sanctity without necessarily quitting 
their secular vocations. They were perse¬ 
cuted in the latter half of the fourteenth 
century as heretics, and either dispersed or 
distributed over the Dominican and Francis¬ 
can orders. 

Begharmi (be-gar'mi). See Bagirmi. 

Beg'lerbeg (‘prince of princes’), the title 
among the Turks of a governor who has 
under him several begs, agas, &c. 

Bego'nia, an extensive genus of succulent¬ 
stemmed herbaceous plants, order Begoni- 
acese, with fleshy oblique leaves of various 
colours, and showy unisexual flowers, the 
whole perianth coloured. They readily 
hybridize, and many fine varieties have been 
raised from the tuberous-rooted kinds. From 
the shape of their leaves they have been 
called elephant's ear. Almost all the plants 
of the order are tropical, and they have 
mostly pink or red flowers. 

Beguards. See Beghards. 

Beguines (be-genz'), an order of females, 
who, without taking the monastic vows, 
formed societies for devotion and charity, 
living in houses called heguinages. The 
order originated, towards the end of the 
eleventh century, in Germany and the 
Netherlands, and was very flourishing in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They 
still exist in Holland, Belgium, and Ger¬ 
many, though the modern beguinage is an 
eleemosynary institution for lodging unmar¬ 
ried women rather than of the old type. 

& 


Be'gum, in the East Indies, a princess or 
lady of high rank. 

Behaim', or Behem, Martin, a mathe¬ 
matician and astronomer, born at Niirn- 
berg about 1430. He went from Antwerp 
to Lisbon with a high reputation in 1480, 
sailed in the fleet of Diego Cam on a voyage 
of discovery (1484-86), and explored the 
islands on the coast of Africa as far as the 
Congo. He colonized the island of Fayal, 
where he remained for several years, and 
assisted in the discovery of the other Azores; 
was afterwards knighted, and returned to 
his native country, where, in 1492, he con¬ 
structed a terrestrial globe, still preserved. 
He died in Lisbon 1506. 

Beham, the name of two engravers and 
painters.— 1. Barthel, pupil of Diirer, 
born at Niirnberg 1498, died at Home 1540. 
A picture by him in the Pinakothek at 
Munich ranks among the master-pieces of 
the old German school.—2. Hans Sebald, 
born at Niirnberg in 1500; brother of Bar¬ 
thel. He was one of Diirer’s ablest pupils, 
but his subjects were often gross. His later 
career was that of a tavern and brothel 
keeper, and he died or was put to death 
about 1550. 

Behai*', a prov. of Hindustan, in Bengal, 
area 44,139 sq. miles. It is generally flat, 
and is divided into almost equal parts by 
the Ganges, the chief tributaries of which 
in the prov. are the Gogra, Gandak, Kusi, 
Mahananda, and Soane. There is an ex¬ 
tensive canal and irrigation system. Opium 
and indigo are largely produced. It is the 
most densely peopled prov. of India; pop. 
23,127,104. Patna is the capital.— The 
town of Behar, in the Patna district, con¬ 
tains some ancient mosques and the ruins 
of an old fort; it is a place of large trade. 
Pop. 48,968. 

Beheading. See Capital Punishment. 

Behe'moth, the animal described in Job 
xl. The description is most applicable to 
the hippopotamus, and the word seems to be 
of Egyptian origin and to signify ‘water- 
ox’; but it has been variously asserted to be 
the ox, the elephant, the crocodile, &c. 

Be'hen, Oil of. Same as Oil of Ben. 

Behis'tun, or Bis'utun, a mountain near 
a village of the same name in Persian Kur¬ 
distan, celebrated for the sculptures and 
cuneiform inscriptions cut upon one of its 
sides—a rock rising almost perpendicularly 
to the height of 1700 feet. These works, 
which stand about 300 feet from the ground, 
were executed by the orders of Darius I. f 

438 



BEHN — 

king of Persia, and set forth his genealogy 
and victories. To receive the inscriptions 
the rock was carefully polished and coated 
with a hard siliceous varnish. Their probable 
date is about 515 b.c. They were first copied 
and deciphered by Rawlinson. 

Behn (ben), Aphra, English writer of plays 
and novels, born 1640; maiden name Johnson. 
As a child she went out to Surinam, where 
she became acquainted with the slave Oroo- 
noko, whom she made the subject of a novel. 
On her return to England she married Mr. 
Behn, a London merchant of Dutch extrac¬ 
tion, but was probably a widow when sent 
by Charles II. to serve as a spy at Antwerp 
during the Dutch war. She afterwards 
became fashionable among the men of wit 
and pleasure of the time as a prolific writer 
of plays, poems, and stories, now more no¬ 
torious for their indecency than their ability. 
She died in 1689, and was buried in West¬ 
minster Abbey. 

Behring, or Bering (baring), Vitus, a 
famous navigator, born in 1680 at Horsens, 
Jutland. The courage displayed by him as 
captain in the navy of Peter the Great during 
the Swedish wars led to his being chosen to 
command a voyage of discovery in the Sea 
of Kamtchatka. In 1728 and subsequently 
he examined the coasts of Kamtchatka, 
Okhotsk, and the north of Siberia, ascertain¬ 
ing the relation between the north-eastern 
Asiatic and north-western American coasts. 
Returning from America in 1741, he was 
wrecked upon the desert island of Awatska 
(Behring’s Island), and died there. 

Behring’s Strait, Sea, and Island.— 
The strait is the channel separating the 
continents of Asia and America, and con¬ 
necting the North Pacific with the Arctic 
Ocean; breadth at the narrowest part, 
between Cape Prince of Wales and East 
Cape, about 36 miles; depth in the middle 
from 29 to 30 fathoms. It is frozen in 
winter, and seldom free from fog or haze. 
Though named after Vitus Behring, it was 
only fully explored by Cook in 1778.— 
Behring’s Sea, sometimes called the Sea 
of Kamtchatka, is that portion of the North 
Pacific Ocean lying between the Aleutian 
Islands and Behring’s Strait.— Behring’s 
Island, the most westerly of the Aleutian 
chain, off the east coast of Kamtchatka. 
It is uninhabited, and is without wood. 
A contention between the United States 
and Great Britain as to the capture of seals 
in Behring’s Sea has been (1892) referred 
by treaty to a court of arbitration, con- 

439 


- BEKKER. 

sisting of seven persons, two representing 
the United States, two representing Great 
Britain (one to be a Canadian), and one 
each from France, Sweden and Italy; the 
modus vivendi of last year (1891) mean¬ 
while to be observed. 

Beira (ba'i-ra), a province of Portugal, 
between Spain and the Atlantic, and 
bounded by the Douro on the N. and by 
the Tagus and Estremadura on the S. Area, 
9244 square miles. Pop. 1,377,432. Chief 
town, Coimbra. It is mountainous and well 
watered, and productive of wine and olives. 
The heir apparent of the crown is styled 
Prince of Beira. 

Beiram. See Bairavi. 

Beit-el-Fakih (bat-el-fa'ke), a town, 
Arabia, Yemen, a principal market for 
Mocha coffee. Pop. 8000. 

Beja (ba/zha), a town, Portugal, province 
of Algarve, with an old cathedral and some 
Roman remains. Pop. 8500. 

Bejapoor', a ruined city of Hindustan, in 
the Bombay presidency, near the borders of 
the Nizam’s Dominions, on an affluent of the 
Krishna. It was one of the largest cities in 
India until its capture by Aurungzebe in 1686. 
The ruins, of which some are in the richest 
style of oriental art, are chiefly Mohammedan, 
the principal being Mahomet Shah’s tomb, 
with a dome visible for 14 miles, and a Hindu 
temple in the earliest Brahmanical style. 
Pop. 13,245. 

Bejar (ba-Ziar'), a fortified town of Spain, 
prov. Salamanca, with woollen manufac¬ 
tures. Pop. 11,000. 

Beke (bek), Charles Tilstone, English 
traveller, born 1800. He studied law at 
Lincoln’s Inn, and having devoted much 
attention to ancient history and kindred sub¬ 
jects he published in 1834 Origines Biblicas, 
researches in primitive history. Supported 
by private individuals, he joined Major Har¬ 
ris in the exploration of Abyssinia, of which 
he published an account in 1846. Two 
works on the Nile followed in 1847 and 
1849, with a Memoir in defence of Pferes 
Paez and Lobo, issued in Paris 1848. He 
also made journeys to Harran in 1861, to 
Abyssinia in 1865, and to the head of the 
Red Sea in 1874, in which year he died. 

Bekes (ba'kash), a town, Hungary, at the 
junction of the Black and White Kerbs, 
with a trade in flax, cattle, corn, wine, &c. 
Pop. 32,616. 

Bekker, Immanual, German classical 
scholar, born 1785, died 1871. His 
critical editions of the texts of the most 



BEL-BELFAST. 


important Greek and Latin authors, based 
on an examination and comparison of MSS., 
are very valuable, embracing Plato, Aris¬ 
totle, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Livy, and 
Tacitus. He also published contributions 
to the philology of the Romance tongues. 

Bel, the chief deity of the ancient Baby¬ 
lonians. See Babylon. 

Bel, also Belgar, the Hindu name of the 
JEgle marmelos, or Bengal quince. The 
fruit, which is not un¬ 
like an orange, is slightly 
aperient; a perfume and 
yellow dye are obtained 
from the rind, and a 
cement from the mucus 
of the seed. 

Bela, the name of four 
kings of Hungary be¬ 
longing to the Arpad 
dynasty.— Bela I., son 
of Ladislaf, competed 
for the crown with his 
brother Andrew, whom 
he defeated, killed, and 
succeeded in 1061. He 
died 1063, after intro¬ 
ducing many reforms. — 

Bela II., the Blind, 
mounted the throne in 
1131, and after ruling 
under the evil guidance 
of his queen, Helena, 
died from the effects of 
his vices in 1141.— 

Bela III., crowned 
1174, corrected abuses, 
repelled the Bohemians, Poles, Austrians, 
and Venetians, and died in 1196.— Bela IV., 
succeeded his father Andrew II. in 1235; 
was shortly after defeated by the Tartars 
and detained prisoner for some time in Aus¬ 
tria, where he had sought refuge. In 1244 
he regained his throne, with the aid of the 
knights of Rhodes, and defeated the Aus¬ 
trians, but was in turn beaten by the Bohe¬ 
mians. Died 1270. 

Bel and the Dragon, a book of the Apoc¬ 
rypha, forming a sort of addition to the 
book of Daniel. In it Daniel is shown as 
exposing the imposture of the priests of Bel 
and killing a sacred dragon. 

Belbeis (bel'bas), a town, Lower Egypt, 
28 miles n.n.e. of Cairo, on the road to Syria. 
Near it are traces of the ancient canal that 
joined the Nile to the Red Sea. Pop. 
5000. 

Belem (ba-len')j a fown of Portugal, on 


the right bank of the Tagus, now the fash¬ 
ionable suburb of Lisbon. 

Bel'emnite, a name for straight, solid, ta¬ 
pering, dart-shaped fossils, popularly known 
as arrow-heads, thunderbolts, finger-stones, 
&c. 

Bel'fast, a seaport in Maine, U. S.; cap¬ 
ital of Waldo county, on Penobscot Bay. 
Shipbuilding, etc., etc. Pop. 1890, 5294. 

Belfast', a seaport and municipal and 
parliamentary borough 
of Ireland (in 1888 de¬ 
clared a city), principal 
town of Ulster, and 
county town of Antrim, 
built on low alluvial 
land on the left bank of 
the Lagan, at the head 
of Belfast Lough. Bal- 
lymacarret, in county 
Down, on the right bank 
of the Lagan, is a 
suburb. The streets are 
spacious and regular, 
the houses mostly of 
brick. The chief Epis¬ 
copal churches are St. 
Ann’s, Trinity, and St. 
George’s, but the most 
magnificent is the Ro¬ 
man Catholic St. Peter’s. 
The chief educational 
institutions are the 
Queen’s College, with 
about twenty profes¬ 
sors ; and the theological 
colleges of the Presby¬ 
terians and Methodists. Chief public build¬ 
ings; the town-hall; the county court-house; 
the Commercial Buildings and Exchange; the 
White and Brown Linen Halls; the range of 
buildings for the customs, inland revenue, and 
post-otfice; the county jail; the Ulster Hall; 
the Albert memorial clock-tower, 143 feet 
high; the theatre; &c. In the suburbs are 
two extensive public parks, a botanic gar¬ 
den of 17 acres, and the borough cemetery. 
Belfast Lough is about 12 miles long, and 
6 miles broad at the entrance, gradually 
narrowing as it approaches the town. The 
harbour and dock accommodation is now 
extensive, new docks having been recently 
added. Belfast is the centre of the Irish 
linen trade, and has the majority of spin¬ 
ning-mills and power-loom factories in Ire¬ 
land. Previous to about 1830 the cotton 
manufacture was the leading industry of Bel¬ 
fast, but pearly all the mills have beep con,- 



Belemnites. 

1. Belemnoteuthis antiquus—ventral side. 

2. Belemnites Owenii (restored), a, Guard, 
c, Phragmacone. d. Muscular tissue of mantle. 
f, Infundibulum, i, Uncinated arms, b., Ten- 
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BELFORT 


BELGIUM. 


verted to flax-spinning. The iron ship¬ 
building trade is also of importance, and 
there are breweries, distilleries, flour-mills, 
oil-mills, foundries, print-works, tan-yards, 
chemical works, ropeworks, &c. The com¬ 
merce is large. An extensive direct trade 
is carried on with British North America, 
the Mediterranean, France, Belgium, Hol¬ 
land, and the Baltic, besides the regular 
traffic with the principal ports of the British 
islands. Belfast is comparatively a modern 
town, its prosperity dating from the intro¬ 
duction of the cotton trade in 1777. It 
has suffered severely at various times from 
faction-fights between Catholics and Pro¬ 
testants, the more serious having been in the 
years 1864, 1872, and 1886. It returns four 
members to the Imperial Parliament. Pop. 
in 1891,255,896; of parliamentary borough, 
273,055. 

Belfort, or Befort (ba-for), a small forti¬ 
fied town and territory of France, in the 
former dep. Haut Rhin, on the Savoureuse, 
well built, with an ancient castle and a fine 
parish church. In the Franco-German war it 
capitulated to the Germans only after an in¬ 
vestment of more than three months’ dura¬ 
tion (1870-71). It has since been greatly 
strengthened. Belfort, with the district im¬ 
mediately surrounding it, is the only part 
of the deparment of Haut Rhin which re¬ 
mained to France on the cession of Alsace 
to Germany. Pop.of territory, 1891,83,670. 

Bel'fry, a bell-tower or bell-turret. A 
bell-tower may be attached to another 
building, or may stand apart; a bell-turret 
usually rises above the roof of a building, 
and is often placed above the top of the 
western gable of a church. The part of a 
tower containing a bell or bells is also called 
a belfry. 

Bel'gae, a collection of German and Celtic 
tribes who anciently inhabited the country 
extending between the Marne and Seine 
and the lower Rhine, and bounded north¬ 
west by the sea. Caesar, on his invasion of 
Britain, found them established also in Kent 
and Sussex. 

Bel'gard, a town of Prussia, prov. Pom¬ 
erania, 15 miles south of the Baltic, with an 
old castle. Pop. 7868. 

Belgaum (bel-ga'um), a town and for¬ 
tress in Hindustan, Bombay Presidency, 
district of Belgaum, on a plain 2500 feet 
above the sea-level. In 1818 the fort and 
town were taken by the British, and from 
its healthy situation selected as a permanent 
military station. Pop. of town (including 

441 


7921 for the cantonment), 32,697. The area 
of the district is 4657 sq. miles, with a pop. 
of 864,014. 

Bel'gica, a part of ancient Gaul, origi¬ 
nally the land of the Bellov&ci and Atre- 
b&tes, who lived in the neighbourhood of 
Amiens, and perhaps of Senlis. 

Belgiojoso (bel-jo-yo'so), a town, Italy, 
province of Pavia, with an old castle, in 
which Francis I. was lodged after the battle 
of Pavia in 1525. Pop. about 4000. 

Belgiojoso, Cristina, Princess of, an 
Italian lady who took a distinguished part 
in the revolutionary movement of 1830, and 
again in 1848, when she raised a volunteer 
corps at her own expense. After an exile 
of some years she returned under the 
amnesty of 1856, regained her property, 
and supported the policy of Cavour. Died 
1871, aged sixty-three. 

Belgium (bel'jum; French, Belgique; Ger¬ 
man, Belgien), a European kingdom, bounded 
by Holland, the North Sea or German Ocean, 
France, and Germany; greatest length, 165 
miles; greatest breadth, 120 miles; area, 
11,366 square miles. For administrative 
purposes it is divided into nine provinces— 
Antwerp, Brabant, East Flanders, West 
Flanders, Hainaut, Liege, Limburg, Luxem¬ 
burg, and Namur; total pop. on 31st Dec. 
1891, 6,136,444. Brabant, the metropolitan 
province, occupies the centre. The capital 
is Brussels; other chief towns are Antwerp, 
Ghent, and Liege. The country may be 
regarded roughly as an inclined plain, fall¬ 
ing away in height from the southern dis¬ 
trict of the Ardennes until in the N. and w. 
it becomes only a few feet above sea-level. 
The surface rocks in the south consist of 
slate, old red sandstone, and mountain lime¬ 
stone; towards the N.w. a coal and iron field 
stretches across the provinces of Hainaut 
and Lidge, skirting those of Namur and 
Luxemburg. North and west of this coal¬ 
field a more recent formation is found, 
covered inland by deep beds of clay and on 
the coast by sand-dunes. The chief rivers 
are the Scheldt or Schelde and Meuse or 
Maas, which cross the country in a north¬ 
easterly direction; other navigable streams 
are the Dender, Dyle, Lys, Ourthe, Rupel, 
and Sambre. There are also a number of 
canals. The climate bears a considerable 
resemblance to that of the same latitudes 
in England; healthiest in Luxemburg and 
Namur, unhealthiest in the fens of Flanders 
and Antwerp. About one-sixth of the 
whole surface of the kingdom is occupied 


BELGIUM. 


by wood, Luxemburg and Namur being 
very densely wooded. These woods, the 
remains of the ancient forest of Ardennes, 
consist of hard wood, principally oak, and 
furnish valuable timber, besides many tons 
of bark both for the home-tanneries and for 
exportation, and large quantities of char¬ 
coal. South Brabant also possesses several 
fine forests, among others that of Soignies; 
but in the other provinces the timber— 
mostly varieties of poplar—is grown in 
small copses and hedgerows. 

About four-fifths of the whole kingdom 
is under cultivation, and nearly eleven- 
twelfths of it profitably occupied, leaving 
only about one-twelfth waste. In the high 
lands traversed by the Ardennes the climate 
is ungen ial, and the soil shallow and stony. 
On the natural pastures here, however, 
much stock is reared, and a hardy breed 
of horses, while vast herds of swine feed 
in the forests. Where the soil is arable 
it is turned to account, and the vine has 
been grown with fair success in some dis¬ 
tricts. In the opposite extremity of Bel 
gium is an extensive tract known as the 
Campine, composed for the most part of 
barren sand, with here and there a patch 
of more promising appearance. Agricul¬ 
tural colonies, partly free and partly com¬ 
pulsory, have been planted in different parts 
of this district with considerable success, 
some of the finest cattle and much excel¬ 
lent dairy produce coming from it. But a 
portion of it remains untouched. With ex¬ 
ception of the two districts now described, 
there is no part of Belgium in which agri¬ 
culture does not flourish; but it reaches its 
highest in E. and W. Flanders. Flemish 
husbandry part'akes more of the nature of 
garden than of field culture, being very 
largely spade-farming. The chief corn 
crops are wheat, rye, and oats (600,000 to 
700,000 acres each); but they do not suffice 
for the wants of the country. The chief 
green crops are potatoes, beet (partly for 
sugar), and flax, the last a most valuable 
crop in the Flemish rotation. The cattle 
are good and numerous. The horses of 
Flanders are admirably adapted for draught, 
and an infusion of their blood has contri¬ 
buted not a little to form the magnificent 
teams of the London draymen. The min¬ 
erals of Belgium are highly valuable. They 
are almost entirely confined to the four 
provinces of Hainaut, Lidge, Namur, and 
Luxemburg, and consist of ii’on and coal, 
lead, manganese, and zinc, the first two 


minerals being far the most important. 
The iron-working district lies between the 
Sambre and the Meuse, and also in the 
province of Li^ge. At present the largest 
quantity of ore is raised in that of Namur. 
The coal-field has an area of above 500 
square miles. The quantity of coal raised an¬ 
nually is about 18,000,000 tons. The export, 
chiefly to France, is over 5,000,000 tons, 
forming one of the largest and most valu¬ 
able of all the Belgian exports. Belgium 
is also abundantly supplied with building- 
stone, pavement limestone, roofing-slate, 
and marble. 

The industrial products of Belgium are 
very numerous, and are mostly of high 
character. The chief are those connected 
with linen, wool, cotton, metal, and lea¬ 
ther goods. In respect of manufactures 
the fine linens of Flanders, and lace of 
South Brabant, are of European reputation. 
Scarcely less celebrated are the carpets and 
porcelain of Tournay, the cloth of Verviers, 
the extensive foundries, machine - works, 
and other iron establishments of Li^ge. 
The commerce of Belgium is large and in¬ 
creasing. Apart from the value of her own 
products, she is admirably situated for the 
transit trade of Central Europe, to which 
her fine harbour of Antwerp and excellent 
railway and canal system minister. The 
exports of Belgian produce and manufac¬ 
tures, which in 1840 were valued zt 
$28,000,000, have risen to $250,000,000. 
The imports for home consumption amount 
to some $300,000,000. The transit trade is 
valued at $250,000,000. The articles of im¬ 
port are chiefly cereals, raw cotton, wool, and 
colonial produce; those of export principally 
coal and flax, tissues of flax, cotton and 
wool, machinery, &c. The exports to Great 
Britain in 1891 were to the value of over 
£17,250,000; the imports of British pro¬ 
duce into Belgium about £7,375,000. More 
than a third of the exports of Belgian pro¬ 
duce and manufactures are sent to France. 
The external trade is chiefly carried on by 
means of foreign (British) vessels. The 
total burden of the Belgian mercantile 
marine is only about 73,000 tons. The 
railways have a total length of 2800 miles, 
about three-fourths of this mileage belong- 

• 1 o o 

mg to the state. 

The Belgian population is the densest of 
any European state (539 per square mile), 
and is composed of two distinct races— 
Flemish, who are of German, and Walloons, 
who are of French extraction. The former, 

442 


BELGIUM. 


by far tbe more numerous, have their prin¬ 
cipal locality in Flanders; but also prevail 
throughout Antwerp, Limburg, and part of 
South Brabant. The latter are found chiefly 
in Hainaut, Li^ge, Namur, and part of Lux¬ 
emburg. The Flemings speak a dialect of 
German, and the Walloons a corruption of 
French, with a considerable infusion of 
words and phrases from Spanish and other 
languages. French is the official and literary 
language, though Flemish is also success¬ 
fully employed in literature. Almost the 
entire population is Homan Catholic, and 
there are over 1500 convents, with nearly 
25,000 inmates. Protestantism is fully 
tolerated, and even salaried by the state, but 
cannot count more than 15,000 adherents. 
Improved means of education are now at 
the disposal of the people, every commune 
being bound to maintain at least one school 
for elementary education, the government 
paying one-sixth, the province one-sixth, 
and the commune the remainder of the 
expenditure. In all the large towns col¬ 
leges ( athenees ) have been established; while 
a complete course for the learned profes¬ 
sions is provided by four universities, two 
of them, at Ghent and Liege, established 
and supported by the state; one at Brus¬ 
sels, the Free University, founded by volun¬ 
tary association; and one at Louvain, the 
Catholic University, founded by the clergy. 
Although the condition of the papulation is, 
for the most part, one of comfort, yet in 
Flanders and South Brabant, where it is 
800 per square mile, a fourth of the people is 
dependent on total or occasional relief, and 
pauper riots have repeatedly occurred. 

By the Belgian constitution the executive 
power is vested in a hereditary king; the 
legislative, in the king and two chambers— 
the senate and the chamber of representa¬ 
tives—both elected by citizens paying 33s. 
6d. of direct taxes, the former for eight 
years, and the latter for four, but one-half 
of the former renewable every four years, 
and one-half of the latter every two years. 
Each of the provinces is administered by a 
governor and is subdivided into arrondisse~ 
merits administratifs and arrondissements 
judiciaires; subdivided again, respectively, 
into cantons de milice and cantons dc justice 
de paix. Each canton is composed of se veral 
communes, of which the sum total is 2514. 
The army is formed by conscription, to 
which every able man who has completed 
his nineteenth year is liable, and also by 
voluntary enlistment. The peace strength 

443 


(1891) is 48,841 officers and men; in time 
of war 154,780. Besides this standing army 
there is a garde civique numbering 43,647 
active and 90,000 non-active men. The 
navy is confined to a few steamers and a 
small flotilla of gun-boats. The estimated 
revenue for 1892, chiefly from railways, 
direct taxation, and transport dues, was 
342,546,190 francs, the estimated expendi¬ 
ture 339,502,685 francs. Nearly one-fourth 
of the expenditure is in payment of interest 
of the national debt, the sum total of which 
in 1891-92 was 2,073,560,000 francs. The 
coins, weights, and measures are the same, 
both in name and value, as those of France. 

History. —The territory now known as 
Belgium originally formed only a section of 
that known to Ctesar as the territory of the 
Belgae, extending from the right bank of 
the Seine to the left bank of the Rhine, and 
to the ocean. This district continued under 
Roman sway till the decline of the empire; 
subsequently formed part of the kingdom 
of Clovis; and then of that of Charlemagne, 
whose ancestors belonged to Landen and 
Herstal on the confines of the Ardennes. 
After the breaking up of the empire of 
Charlemagne Belgium formed part of the 
kingdom of Lotharingia under Charle¬ 
magne’s grandson, Lothaire; Artois and 
Flanders, however, belonging to France by 
the treaty of Verdun. 

For more than a century this kingdom 
was contended for by the kings of France 
and the emperors of Germany. In 953 it 
was conferred by the Emperor Otto upon 
Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who assumed 
the title of archduke, and divided it into 
two duchies: Upper and Lower Lorraine. 
In the frequent struggles which took place 
during the eleventh century Luxemburg, 
Namur, Hainaut, and Liege usually sided 
with France, while Brabant, Holland, and 
Flanders commonly took the side of Ger¬ 
many. The contest between the civic and 
industrial organizations and feudalism, 
which went on through the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, and in which Flanders 
bore a leading part, was temporarily closed 
by the defeat of the Ghentese under Van 
Artevelde in 1382. In 1384 Flanders and 
Artois fell to the house of Burgundy, which 
in less than a century acquired the whole of 
the Netherlands. The death of Charles the 
Bold at Nancy, in his attempt to raise the 
duchy into a kingdom (1477), was followed 
by the succession and marriage of his 
daughter, Mary of Burgundy, by which 


BELGIUM 

the Netherlands became an Austrian pos¬ 
session. With the accession, however, of 
the Austrian house of Hapsburg to the 
Spanish throne, the Netherlands, after a 
brief period of prosperity attended by the 
spread of the reformed religion, became the 
scene of increasingly severe persecution 
under Charles Y. and Philip II. of Spain. 
Driven to rebellion, the seven northern 
states under William of Orange, the Silent, 
succeeded in establishing their indepen¬ 
dence, but the southern portion, or Bel¬ 
gium, continued under the Spanish yoke. 

From 1598 to 1621 the Spanish Nether¬ 
lands were transferred as an independent 
kingdom to the Austrian branch of the 
family by the marriage of Isabella, daughter 
of Philip II., with the Archduke Albert of 
Austria. He died childless, however, and 
they reverted to Spain. After being twice 
conquered by Louis XIV., conquered again 
by Marlborough, coveted by all the powers, 
deprived of territory on the one side by 
Holland and on the other by France, the 
Southern Netherlands were at length in 
1714, by the peace of Utrecht, again placed 
under the dominion of Austria, with the 
name of the Austrian Netherlands. During 
the Austrian war of succession the French 
under Saxe conquered nearly the whole 
country, but restored it in 1748 by the peace 
of Aix-la-Chapelle. The Seven Years’ War 
(1756-63) did not affect Belgium, and in 
that period, and during the peace which 
followed, she regained much of her pros¬ 
perity under Maria Theresa and Charles 
of Lorraine. On the succession of Joseph 
II., the ‘ philosophic emperor,’ a serious 
insurrection occurred, the Austrian army 
being defeated at Turnhout, and the pro¬ 
vinces forming themselves into an inde¬ 
pendent state as united Belgium (1790). 
They had scarcely been subdued again by 
Austria before they were conquered by the 
revolutionary armies of France, and the 
country divided into French departments, 
the Austrian rule being practically closed 
by the battle of Fleurus (1794), and the 
French possession confirmed by the treaties 
of Campo Formio (1797) and Lun^ville 
(1801). 

In 1815 Belgium was united by the Con¬ 
gress of Vienna to Holland, both countries to¬ 
gether now forming one state,the Kingdom of 
the Netherlands. This union lasted till 1830, 
when a revolt broke out among the Bel¬ 
gians, and soon attained such dimensions 
that the Dutch troops were unable to le- 


— BELIAL. 

press it. A convention of the great powers 
assembled in London, favoured the separa¬ 
tion of the two countries, and drew up a 
treaty to regulate it; the National Con¬ 
gress of Belgium offering the crown, on the 
recommendation of England, to Leopold, 
prince of Saxe-Coburg, who acceded to it 
under the title of Leopold I., on July 21, 
1831. In November of the same year the 
five powers guaranteed the crown to him by 
the treaty of London, and the remaining 
difficulties with Holland were settled in 
1839, when the Dutch claims to territory in 
Limburg and Luxemburg were withdrawn. 
The reign of Leopold was for Belgium a 
prosperous period of thirty-four years. Leo¬ 
pold II. succeeded his father in 1865. In 
recent years the chief feature of Belgian 
politics has been a keen struggle between 
the clerical and the liberal party. Till 1878 
the clerical party maintained the upper 
hand, but to a large extent by corruption 
at the elections. In 1877 a bill was passed 
to put down corruption, and to increase the 
number of town deputies to the chamber of 
representatives; and at the next elections, 
in June, 1878, the Liberals gained a major¬ 
ity, which they lost in 1884. In 1885, on 
the constitution by the Congress of Berlin 
of the Congo Free State, in which Leopold 
II. had shown an active interest, he was in¬ 
vited to become its sovereign, and has since 
held that title. Prince Baldwin, heir pre¬ 
sumptive, died in 1891. 

Belgrade (bel-grad'), capital ot Servia, on 
the right bank of the Danube in the angle 
formed by the junction of the Save with 
that river, consists of the citadel or upper 
town, on a rock 100 feet high; and the 
lower town, which partly surrounds it. Of 
late years buildings of the European type 
have multiplied, and the older ones suffered 
to fall into decay. The chief are the royal 
and episcopal palaces, the government build¬ 
ings, the cathedral, barracks, bazaars, 
national theatre, and various educational 
institutions. It manufactures carpets, silk 
stuffs, hardware, cutlery, and saddlery; and 
carries on an active trade. Being the key 
of Hungary, it was long an object of fierce 
contention between the Austrians and the 
Turks, remaining, however, for the most 
part in the hands of the Turks until its 
evacuation by them in 1867. Since the 
treaty of Berlin (July, 1878) it has been 
the capital of an independent state. Pop. 
40,000. 

Be'lial, a word which by the translators 
444 



BELISARIUS-BELL. 


of the English Bible is often treated as a 
proper name, as in the expressions ‘son of 
Belial,’ ‘man of Belial.’ In the Old Testa¬ 
ment, however, it ought not to be taken as 
a proper name, but it should be translated 
‘wickedness’ or ‘worthlessness.’ To the 
later Jews Belial seems to have become 
what Pluto was to the Greeks, the name of 
the ruler of the infernal regions; and in 
2 Cor. vi. 15 it seems to be used as a name of 
Satan, as the personification of all that is bad. 

Belisa'rius (Slavonic Beli-tzar, White 
Prince), the general to whom the Emperor 
Justinian chiefly owed the splendour of bis 
reign; born in Illyria about 505 A.D. He 
served in the body-guard of the emperor, 
soon after obtained the chief command of 
an army on the Persian frontiers, and in 
530 gained a victory over a superior Per¬ 
sian army. The next year, however, he lost 
a battle, and was recalled. In the year 532 
he checked the disorders in Constantinople 
arising from the Green and Blue factions; 
and was then sent with 15,000 men to 
Africa to recover the territories occupied 
by the Vandals. He took Carthage and 
led Gelimer, the Vandal king, in triumph 
through Constantinople. Dissensions hav¬ 
ing arisen in the Ostrogothic kingdom, he 
was sent to Italy, and though ill supplied 
with money and troops, stormed Naples, 
held Rome for a year, took Ravenna, and 
led captive Vitiges, the Gothic king. He 
rendered honourable service in later cam¬ 
paigns in Italy and against the Bulgarians, 
but was accused of conspiracy and flung 
into prison. He afterwards seems to have 
recovered his property and dignities, the 
story of Tzetzes (a twelfth-century monk), 
that Belisarius wandered about as a blind 
beggar, being probably an invention. He 
died in 565. The only weaknesses in the 
character of Belisarius appear in connection 
with his profligate wife Antonina, an asso¬ 
ciate of the Empress Theodora. 

Belize (be-lez'), the capital and only trad¬ 
ing port of British Honduras, situated at 
the mouth of the southern arm of the river 
Belize. Exports : chiefly mahogany, rose¬ 
wood, logwood, cedar, cocoa-nuts, and sugar. 
Pop. about 5800. 

Belknap (bel'nap), Jeremy, an American 
author, born 1744; minister at Dover, New 
Hampshire, and afterwards at Boston. 
Died 1798. Besides his History of New 
Hampshire, he published two volumes of 
American biography, and a number of poli¬ 
tical, religious, and literary tracts. 

445 


Bell, a hollow, somewhat cup-shaped, 
sounding instrument of metal. The metal 
from which bells are usually made (by 
founding) is an alloy, called bell-metal, com¬ 
monly composed of eighty parts of copper 
and twenty of tin. The proportion of tin 
varies, however, from one-third to one-fifth 
of the weight of the copper, according to 
the sound required, the size of the bell, and 
the impulse to be given. The clearness 
and richness of the tone depend upon the 
metal used, the perfection of its casting, and 
also upon its shape ; it having been shown 
by a number of experiments that the well- 
known shape with a thick lip is the best 
adapted to give a perfect sound. The depth 
of the tone of a bell increases in proportion 
to its size. A bell is divided into the body 
or barrel , the ear or cannon, and the clapper 
or tongue. The lip or sound-bow is that 
part where the bell is struck by the clapper. 

It is uncertain whether the jangling in¬ 
struments used by the Egyptians and Is¬ 
raelites can be correctly described as bells; 
but it is certain that bells of a considerable 
size were in early use in China and Japan, 
and that the Greeks and Romans used them 
for various purposes. They are said to have 
been first introduced into Christian churches 
about 400 a.d. by Paulinus, bishop of Nola, in 
Campania (whence campana and nola as old 
names of bells); although their adoption on 
a wide scale does not become apparent until 
after the year 550, when they were introduced 
into France. Benedict Biscop, abbot of Wear- 
mouth, seems to have imported bells from 
Italy to England in 680, but their use in Ire¬ 
land and Scotland is probably of earlier date. 
The oldest of those existing in Great Britain 
and Ireland, such as the ‘bell of St. Patrick’s 
will’ and St. Ninian’s bell, are quadrangular 
and made of thin iron plates hammered and 
riveted together. Until the thirteenth 
century they were of comparatively small 
size, but after the casting of the Jacqueline 
of Paris (6^ tons) in 1400 their weight 
rapidly increased. Among the more famous 
bells are the bell of Cologne, 11 tons, 1448; 
of Dantzic, 6 tons, 1453; of Halberstadt, 
7\, 1457; of Rouen, 16, 1501; of Breslau, 
11,1507; of Lucerne, 7^,1636; of Oxford, 7i, 
1680; of Paris, 12-|, 1680; of Bruges, 10|, 
1680; of Vienna, 17f, 1711; of Moscow (the 
monarch of all bells), 193, 1736; three other 
bells at Moscow ranging from 16 to 31 tons, 
and a fourth of 80 tons cast in 1819; the 
bell of Lincoln (Great Tom), 5£, 1834; of 
York Minster (Great Peter), lOf, 1845; of 



BEtL. 


Montreal, 13i, 1847; of Westminster (Big 
Ben), 15J, 1856, (St. Stephen), 13£, 1858; 
the Great Bell of St. Paul’s, 17^, 1882. 
Others are the bells of Ghent (5), Gorlitz 
(lOf), St. Peter’s, Pome (8), Antwerp (7^), 
Olmutz (18), Brussels (7), Novgorod (31), 
Pekin (53£). 

Besides their use in churches bells are 
employed for various purposes, the most 
common use being to summon attendants 
or domestics in private houses, hotels, &c. 
Bells for this purpose are of small size and 
may be held in the hand and rung, but 
most commonly are rung by means of wires 
stretched from the various apartments to 
the place where the bells are hung. Bells 
rung by electricity are now becoming com¬ 
mon in hotels and other establishments. 

Bells, as the term is used on shipboard, 
are the strokes of the ship’s bell that pro¬ 
claim the hours. Eight bells, the highest 
number, are rung at noon and every fourth 
hour afterwards, i.e. at 4, 8 , 12 o’clock, 
and so on. The intermediary periods are 
indicated thus: 12‘30, one bell; 1 o’clock, 
2 bells; T30, 3 bells, &c., until the eight 
bells announce 4 o’clock, when the series 
recommences 4'30, one bell; 5 o’clock, two 
bells, &c. The even numbers of strokes 
thus always announce hours, the odd num¬ 
bers half-hours. 

Bell, Alexander Graham, inventor of the 
telephone, was born at Edinburgh, 1847. 
He was educated at Edinburgh and in Ger¬ 
many, and settled in Canada in 1870. In 
1872 he went to the United States and in¬ 
troduced for the education of deaf-mutes 
the system of visible speech contrived by 
his father Alexander Melville Bell. He be¬ 
came professor of vocal physiology in Boston 
University, and exhibited his telephone, 
designed and partly constructed some years 
before, at the Philadelphia exhibition in 
1878. He has also been the inventor of 
the photophone. 

Bell, Alexander Melville, father of the 
above, was born at Edinburgh in 1819. He 
was a distinguished teacher of elocution in 
that city; in 1865 removed to London to 
act as a lecturer in University College; and 
in 1870 went to Canada and became con¬ 
nected with Queen’s College, Kingston. He 
is inventor of the system of * visible speech,’ 
in which all the possible articulations of the 
human voice have corresponding characters 
designed to represent the respective posi¬ 
tions of the vocal organs. This system has 
beep successfully employed in teaching the 


deaf and dumb to speak. Besides writing 
on this subject he has written on elocution, 
stenography, &c. 

Bell, Andrew, D.D., the author of the 
mutual instruction or ‘ Madras ’ system of 
education, was born at St. Andrews, Scot¬ 
land, in 1753, died at Cheltenham 1832. 
He took orders in the Church of England, 
and in 1789 went to Tndia, where he be¬ 
came chaplain at Fort St. George, Madras, 
and manager of the institution for the edu¬ 
cation of the orphan children of European 
soldiers. Failing to retain the services of 
properly qualified ushers, he resorted to the 
expedient of employing the scholars in mu¬ 
tual instruction; and after his return to Bri¬ 
tain published a treatise on the monitorial 
or Madras system of education. Joseph 
Lancaster, a dissenter, began to work on 
the system, and a considerable amount of 
friction and rivalry ensued between the 
dissenters and the church party. Dr. Bell 
lived long enough to witness the introduc¬ 
tion of his system into 12,973 national 
schools, educating 900,000 English children, 
and to know that it was employed exten¬ 
sively in almost every other civilized coun¬ 
try. He latterly became a prebendary of 
Westminster, and was master of Sherborn 
Hospital, Durham. At his death he left 
£ 120,000 for the erection and maintenance 
of schools on his favourite system, £60,000 
of which was set apart for his native town. 

Bell, Sir Charles, anatomist and sur¬ 
geon, was born at Edinburgh in 1774, and 
studied anatomy there under the superin¬ 
tendence of his brother John (see below). 
In 1804 he went to London, and soon dis¬ 
tinguished himself as a lecturer on anatomy 
and surgery. In 1814 he was appointed 
surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, and in 
1821 he communicated to the Royal Society 
a paper on the nervous system, containing 
among other things the important discovery 
that the nerve-filaments of sensation are dis¬ 
tinct from those of motion. It at once at¬ 
tracted general attention and established his 
reputation. In 1824 he accepted the chair 
of anatomy and surgery to the London Col¬ 
lege of Surgeons, and in 1836 that of sur¬ 
gery in the University of Edinburgh. He 
died suddenly in 1842. He was the author 
of many professional works of high repute 
on anatomy and surgery, and of the Bridge- 
water Treatise, The Hand: its Mechanism 
and Vital Endowments as evincing Design. 
He received the honour of knighthood in 
1831. 




446 


Bell—bellA; 


Bell, George Joseph, brother of Sir 
Charles and John Bell (see both names), an 
eminent lawyer, was born in Edinburgh in 
1770, died 1843. He is the author of sev¬ 
eral standard law-books, the most impor¬ 
tant of which is The Principles of the Law 
of Scotland, which has gone through several 
editions. 

Bell, Henry, the first successful applier 
of steam to the purposes of navigation in 
Europe, was born in Linlithgowshire 1767, 
died at Helensburgh 1830. He was appren¬ 
ticed as a millwright, and afterwards served 
under several engineers, including Rennie. 
He settled in Glasgow in 1790, and subse¬ 
quently in Helensburgh. In 1798 he turned 
his attention specially to the steam-boat, the 
practicability of steam navigation having 
been already demonstrated. In 1812 the 
Comet , a small thirty-ton vessel built at 
Glasgow under Bell’s directions, and driven 
by a three horse-power engine made by him¬ 
self, commenced to ply between Glasgow 
and Greenock, and continued to run till she 
was wrecked in 1820. This was the begin¬ 
ning of steam navigation in Europe. It has 
been asserted that Fulton, who started a 
steamer on the Hudson in 1807, obtained 
his ideas from Bell in the previous year. 
Bell is also credited with the invention of 
the ‘ discharging machine ’ used by calico- 
printers. A monument has been erected to 
his memory at Dunglass Point on the Clyde. 

Bell, Henry Glassford, poet, miscella¬ 
neous writer, and lawyer; born in Glasgow 
1803, died 1874. He was educated at the 
Glasgow High School and Edinburgh Uni¬ 
versity. In 1828 he became editor of the 
Edinburgh Literary Journal, which had a 
short but brilliant career. In 1832 he 
passed as advocate, and in 1836 competed 
with Sir W. Hamilton for the chair of logic 
and metaphysics in Edinburgh University. 
In 1839 he was appointed sheriff-substitute 
of Lanarkshire, and in 1867 sheriff-princi- 
pal. Author of several volumes of poetry, 
a Life of Mary Queen of Scots, &c. 

Bell, James, Scottish geographical writer, 
born 1769, died 1833. His first literary 
work was on the Glasgow Geography, a 
popular work of the period, which was in 
1822, chiefly by the labours of Mr. Bell, ex¬ 
tended to five vols. It formed the basis of 
his principal work, A System of Popular and 
Scientific Geography, published at Glasgow 
in six vols. His Gazetteer of England and 
Wales was in the course of publication at the 
time of his death. 


Bell, John, a distinguished surgeon, eldet 
brother of Sir Charles Bell, born in Edin¬ 
burgh 1763, died at Rome 1820. After 
completing his professional education he 
travelled for a short time in Russia and the 
N. of Europe; and on his return to Edin¬ 
burgh began to deliver extra-mural lectures 
on surgery and midwifery. These lectures, 
which fie delivered between the years 1786 
and 1796, were very highly esteemed, and 
speedily brought him into an extensive 
practice as a consulting and operating sur¬ 
geon. 

Bell, John, born near Nashville, Tenn., 
1797, died at Cumberland, 1869; lawyer, 
representative in Congress and Speaker of 
the House; candidate for Presidency 1860. 

Bell, John, English sculptor, born at 
Norfolk 1811. His best-known works are 
the Eagle Slayer, Una and the Lion, The 
Maid of Saragossa, Imogen, Andromeda, 
statues of Lord Falkland, Sir Robert Wal¬ 
pole, Newton, Cromwell, &c., and the Wel¬ 
lington Memorial in Guildhall. He is also 
one of the sculptors of the Guards’ Monu¬ 
ment in Waterloo Place, London, and the 
Prince Consort Memorial in Hyde Park. 
He is the author of several professional 
treatises, and of a drama, Ivan: a Day and 
a Night in Russia. 

Bell, Robert, journalist and miscellane¬ 
ous writer, boi’n in Cork 1800, died in Lon¬ 
don 1867. He settled in London in 1828, 
edited the Atlas for several years, and after¬ 
wards the Monthly Chronicle, Mirror, and 
Home News. He compiled several volumes 
of Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia; but he is 
best known by his annotated edition of the 
British Poets, the first volume of which 
appeared in 1854, and which was carried 
through twenty-nine volumes. He also 
wrote several plays and novels. 

Bell, Thomas, English zoologist, born at 
Poole, Dorset, 1792, died at Selborne, Hamp¬ 
shire, 1880. He became a member of the 
Royal College of Surgeons in 1815, and soon 
secured a large practice as a dentist. In 
1832 he was appointed professor of zoology 
in King’s College, London. His best-known 
separate works are his histories of British 
Quadrupeds, British Reptiles, and British 
Stalk-eyed Crustacea, published in Van 
Voorst’s series. In 1877 he published an 
excellent edition of White’s Natural History 
of Selborne. 

Bel'la, Stefano Della, an engraver, born 
at Florence in 1610, died 1664. In 1642 
he went to Paris, where he was employed 


447 



BELLADONNA-BELL-CRANK. 


by Cardinal Richelieu. He returned to 
Florence and became the teacher in drawing 
of Cosmo de’ Medici. It is said that he 
engraved 1400 plates. 

Belladon'na, a European plant, Atrbpa 
Belladonna , or deadly nightshade, nat. order 
Solanaceae. It is native in Britain. All 
parts of the plant are poisonous, and the in¬ 
cautious eating of the berries has often pro¬ 
duced death. The inspissated juice is com¬ 
monly known by the name of extract of bella¬ 
donna. It is narcotic and poisonous, but 
is of great value in medicine, especially in 
nervous ailments. It has the property of 
causing the pupil of the eye to dilate. The 
fruit of the plant is a dark brownish-black 
shining berry. The name signifies ‘ beauti¬ 
ful lady,’ and is said to have been given 
from the use of the plant as a cosmetic. 

Belladonna Lily, so called on account of 
its beauty, a species of Amaryllis [A. Bella¬ 
donna) with delicate blushing flowers clus¬ 
tered at the top of a leafless flowering stem. 
It is a native of the Cape of Good Hope and 
of the West Indies. 

Bellaire, a town of the U. States, Ohio, 
5 miles below Wheeling, on the Ohio; nu¬ 
merous manufacturing works. Pop. 9934. 

Bellamy, (bel'a-ml), Jacobus, a Flemish 
poet, was born at Flushing in the year 1757, 
and died in 1786. A volume of sentimen¬ 
tal and anacreontic poems was published in 
1782, and was followed in 1785 by a collec¬ 
tion of his patriotic songs under the title 
Vaderlandsche Gezangen, which secured 
him a place among the first poets of his na¬ 
tion. He ranks as one of the restorers of 
modern Dutch poetry. 

Bell-animalcule. See Vorticella. 

Bel'larmine, Robert. See next article. 

Bellarmi'no, Roberto, a cardinal and 
celebrated controversialist of the Roman 
Church, born at Monte Pulciano in Tuscany 
rn 1542, died at Rome 1621. He was or¬ 
dained a priest in 1569 by Jansenius, bishop 
of Ghent, and placed in the theological 
chair of the University of Louv.ain. He 
was made a cardinal on account of his learn¬ 
ing, by Clement VIII., and in 1602 created 
Archbishop of Capua. Paul V. recalled him 
to Rome, on which he resigned his archbi¬ 
shopric without retaining any pension on it 
as he might have done. Bellarmino, whose 
life was a model of Christian asceticism, is 
one of the greatest theologians, particularly 
in polemics, that the Church of Rome has 
ever produced. He had the double merit 
with the court of Rome of supporting her 


temporal power and spiritual supremacy to 
the utmost, and of strenuously opposing the 
reformers. The talent he displayed in the 
latter controversy called forth all the simi¬ 
lar ability on the Protestant side; and for a 
number of years no eminent divine among 
the reformers failed to make his arguments 
a particular subject of refutation. His 
principal work is Disputationes de Contro- 
versiis Fidei ad versus hujus Temporis Hse- 
reticos. 

Bellary (bel-a'ri), a town in India, presi¬ 
dency of Madras, capital of a district of the 
same name, 280 miles north-west of Madras; 
a military station, with a fort crowning a 
lofty rock, and other fortifications. Pop. 
53,460.—The district was ceded to the 
British in 1800. Area, 11,007 square miles; 
pop. 1,336,696. 

Bellay (bel-a), Joachim du, distinguished 
French poet, known as the French Ovid; 
born about 1524, died 1560. He joined 
Ronsard, Daurat, Jodelle, Belleau, Baif, 
and De Tisard in forming the ‘Pleiad,’ a 
society the object of which was to bring the 
French language on a level with the classi¬ 
cal tongues. Bellay’s first contribution was 
La Defense et Illustration de la Langue 
Frangoise. His chief publications in verse 
are Recueil de Podsie; a collection of love- 
sonnets called L’Olive; Les Antiquitez de 
Rome; Les Regrets; and Les Jeux Rustiques. 
In 1555 he became canon of Notre Dame, 
and a short time before his death he was 
made archbishop of Bordeaux. Spenser 
translated some of his sonnets into Eng¬ 
lish. 

Bell-bird, the name given to the Ara- 
punga alba, a South American passerine 
bird, so named from its sonorous bell-like 
notes; and also to the Myzantha melan- 
ophrys of Australia, a bird of the family 
Meliphagidse (honey-suckers), whose notes 
also resemble the sound of a bell. 

Bell, Book, and Candle, a solemn mode 
of excommunication used in the R. Cath. 
Ch. After the sentence was read, the book 
was closed, a lighted candle thrown to the 
ground, and a bell tolled as for one dead. 

Bell-crank, in machinery, a rectangular 
lever by which the direction of motion is 
changed through an angle of 90°, and by 
which its velocity-ratio and range may be 
altered at pleasure by making the arms of 
different lengths. It is much employed in 
machinery, and is named from its being the 
form of crank employed in changing the 
direction of the bell-wires of house-bells. 

448 


BELLINI. 


BELLE-ALLIANCE - 


Belle-Alliance, a farm 13 m. s. of Brus¬ 
sels, famous as the position occupied by the 
centre of the French army in the battle of 
Waterloo, June, 1815. 

Belleau (bel-o), Remy, French poet of the 
Renaissance, and member of the Pleiad 
(see Bellay ); born 1528, died 1577. Chief 
works: Commentaries on Ronsard’s Amours 
and La Bergerie, a pastoral in prose and 
verse. 

Belle-Isle (bel-el),or Belle-Isle-en-Mer, 
a French island in the Bay of Biscay, dep. of 
Morbihan, 8 m. 8. of Quiberon Point; length 
11 m., greatest breadth 6 m. Pop. about 
10 ,000, largely engaged in the pilchard fish¬ 
ing. The capital is Le Palais on the n.e. 
coast. 

Belle-Isle (bel-fl'), a rocky island, 9 m. 
long, at the eastern entrance to the Straits 
of .Belle-Isle, the channel, 15 m. wide, be¬ 
tween N ewfoundland and the coast of Lab¬ 
rador. Steamers from Glasgow and Liver¬ 
pool to Quebec round the north of Ireland 
commonly go by this channel in summer as 
being the shortest route. 

Belleisle (bel-el), Charles Louis Au¬ 
guste Fouquet, Count de, Marshal of 
France, born 1684, died 1761. He distin¬ 
guished himself during the war of the 
Spanish succession, afterwards in Spain and 
Germany, where, under Berwick, he took 
Treves and Trarbach, and had a distin¬ 
guished share in the siege of Phillipsburg. 
The cession of Lorraine to France was 
principally his work. He was created mar¬ 
shal of France about 1740; commanded in 
Germany against the Imperialists, took 
Prague by assault; but the King of Prussia 
having made a separate peace, he was com¬ 
pelled to retreat, which he performed with 
admirable skill. In 1744 he was taken 
prisoner by the English, but was soon ex¬ 
changed. In 1748 he was made a duke and 
peer of France, and the department of war 
was committed to his charge. 

Bel'lenden, John. See Ballentyne. 

Bel'lenden, William, a Scottish writer, 
distinguished for the elegance of his Latin 
style, born between 1550 and 1560, pro¬ 
bably at Lasswade, died between 1631 and 
1633. He was professor of belles-lettres at 
Paris. His principal work is De Statu 
Prisci Orbis, 1615; his other writings being 
chiefly compilations from the works of 
Cicero. 

Beller'ic, the astringent fruit of Termi- 
nalia bellerica. See Myrobolan. 

Beller'ophon, or Hippon'ous, in Greek 
vol. i. 449 


mythology, a hero who, having accidentally 
killed his brother, fled to Proetus, king of 
Argos, whose wife, Antaea, fell in love with 
him. Being slighted, she instigated her 
husband to send him to her father Iobates, 
king of Lycia, with a letter urging him to 
put to death the insulter of his daughter. 
That king, not wishing to do so directly, 
imposed on him the dangerous task of con¬ 
quering the Chimsera, which Bellerophon, 
mounted on Pegasus, a gift from Athena, 
overpowered. Iobates afterwards gave him 
his daughter in marriage, and shared his 
kingdom with him. He attempted to soar 
to heaven on the winged horse Pegasus, but 
fell to the earth, where he wandered about 
blind, till he died. 

Beller'ophon, a large genus t>f fossil nau- 
tiloid shells, consisting of only one chamber, 
like the living Argonaut. They occur in 
the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous 
strata. 

Belles-lettres (bel-let-r), polite or elegant 
literature: a word of somewhat vague signi¬ 
fication. Rhetoric, poetry, fiction, history, 
and criticism, with the languages in which 
the standard works in these departments are 
written, are generally understood to come 
under the head of belles-lettres. 

Belleville (bel-vil'), town of the United 
States, capital of St. Clair co., Illinois, with 
important manufactures, and a large rolling- 
mill. Pop. 1890, 15,360. 

Belleville, a town of Canada, prov. On¬ 
tario, capital of Hastings co., on the Bay of 
Quinte, at the mouth of the Moira, with 
flourishing trade and manufactures. It is 
rather a fine town, and has a Methodist 
Episcopal University for men and women 
(two colleges). Pop. 1891, 9914. 

Belley (bel-a), a town, France, depart¬ 
ment Ain. It was a place of note in the 
time of Julius Caesar, and is the seat of a 
bishopric, founded in 412. Pop. 4792. 

Bell-flower, a common name for the spe¬ 
cies of Campanula , from the shape of the 
flower, which resembles a bell. 

Bellini (bel-e'ne), Jacopo, and his two 
sons, Gentile and Giovanni, the founders 
of the Venetian school of painting. The 
father excelled in portraits, but very little 
of his work is extant. He died about 1470. 
Gentile was born in 1421, and in 1479 went 
to Constantinople, Mohammed II. having 
sent to Venice for a skilful painter; died at 
Venice in 1501. Giovanni was born about 
1424, and died about 1516. He contributed 
much to make oil-painting popular, and has 



BELLINI 


BELLUNO. 


left many noteworthy pictures. Titian and 
Giorgione were among his pupils. 

Bellini (bel-e'ne), Vincenzo, a celebrated 
composer, born at Catania in Sicily in 1802, 
died 1835. He was educated at Naples 
under Zingarelli, commenced writing operas 
before he was twenty, and composed for the 
principal musical establishments in Europe. 
His most celebrated works are I Montecchi 
e Capuleti (1829); La Sonnambula (1831); 
Norma, his best and most popular opera; 
and I Puritani (1834). 

Bellinzo'na, a town of Switzerland, capi¬ 
tal of the canton Ticino; charmingly situated 
on the left bank of the Ticino about 5 miles 
from its embouchure in the N. end of Lago 
Maggiore. It occupies a position of great 
military importance. Pop. about 3000. 

Beilis, the genus to which the daisy be¬ 
longs. 

Bellisle. See BeUe-Isle. 

Bellmann, Karl Mickel, the most ori¬ 
ginal among the Swedish lyric poets, was 
born in 1740, died 1795. His songs, in 
which love and liquor are common themes, 
are sung over the whole country, and ‘ Bell¬ 
mann’ societies hold an annual festival in 
his honour. 

Bell-metal. See Bell. 

Bello'na, the goddess of war among the 
Eomans, often confounded with Minerva. 
She was the sister of Mars, or, according to 
some, his daughter or his wife. She is de¬ 
scribed by the poets as armed with a bloody 
scourge, her hair dishevelled, and a torch 
in her hand. 

Bellot (bel-6), Joseph Ren£, a French 
naval officer, born in Paris 1826, drowned 
1853. In 1851 he joined the expedition to 
the Polar regions in search of Sir John 
Franklin, and took part in several explora¬ 
tions. He was drowned in an attempt to 
carry despatches to Sir Edward Belcher over 
the ice. His diary was published in 1855. 

Bellows, an instrument or machine for 
producing a strong current of air, and prin¬ 
cipally used for blowing fires, either in pri¬ 
vate dwellings or in forges, furnaces, mines, 
&c. It is so formed as, by being dilated 
and contracted, to inhale air by an orifice 
which is opened and closed with a valve, and 
to propel it through a tube upon the fire. 
It is an ancient contrivance, being known 
in Egypt, India, and China many ages ago, 
while forms of it are used among savage 
tribes in Africa. Bellows of very great 
power are called blowing-machines, and 
are wrought by machinery driven by steam. 


Bellows-fish, an acanthopterygious fish 
of the genus Centriscus {C. Scolopax ); called 
also the Trumpet-fish or Sea-snipe. It is 
not uncommon in the Mediterranean, but 



Bellows-fish (Centriscus Scolopax). 


rare in the British seas. It is 4 or 5 inches 
long, and has an oblong oval body and a 
tubular elongated snout, which is adapted 
for drawing from among sea-weed and mud 
the minute Crustacea on which it feeds. 

Belloy (bel-wa), Pierre Laurent Bui- 
rette de, French dramatist, born 1727, died 
1775. His principal plays are Zelmire, a 
tragedy; Le Si^ge de Calais, which was 
immensely popular ; Gaston et Bayard, 
which admitted him into the French Aca¬ 
demy; and Pierre le Cruel. He was one of 
the first to introduce native heroes upon 
the stage. 

Bell Rock, or Inch Cape, a dangerous 
reef surmounted by a lighthouse, situated 
in the German Ocean about 12 miles from 
Arbroath, nearly opposite the mouth of the 
river Tay. It is said that in former ages 
the monks of Aberbrothock caused a bell to 
be fixed on this reef, which was rung by the 
waves, and warned the mariners of this 
highly dangerous place. Tradition also says 
that the bell was wantonly cut away by a 
pii*ate, and that a year after he perished 
on the rock himself with ship and plunder. 
Southey has a well-known poem on this sub¬ 
ject. The lighthouse was erected in 1808-11 
by Robert Stevenson from Rennie’s plan at 
a cost of upwards of £60,000. It rises to a 
height of 120 feet; has a revolving light 
showing alternately red and white every 
minute, and visible for upwards of 15 miles. 
It also contains two bells which are rung 
during thick weather. The reef is partly 
uncovered at ebb-tides. 

Bells, on shipboard. See Bell. 

Belluno (bel-16'no), a city of Northern 
Italy, capital of a province of the same 
name, on the Piave, 48 m. n. of Venice. 
Has a cathedral, a handsome theatre, &c.; 

450 








BELOE-BELZONI. 


and manufactures of silk, straw-plait, leather, 
&c. Pop. 16,000. The province has an area 
of 1271 sq. miles, and a pop. of 195,419. 

Beloe (be'lo), William, English clergy¬ 
man and miscellaneous writer, born 1756, 
died 1817. He was educated at Cambridge, 
and latterly was presented to the rectory of 
Allhallows, London Wall, and subsequently 
to stalls in Lincoln Cathedral and St. Paul’s. 
In 1803 he became keeper of the printed 
books in the British Museum, a post he did 
not retain. His chief publications are Anec¬ 
dotes of Literature and Scarce Books. 

Beloit, Rock county, Wis., 69 miles south¬ 
west of Milwaukee, the seat of Beloit Col¬ 
lege; various factories. Pop. 1890, 6315. 

Bel'omancy, a kind of divination by ar¬ 
rows, practised by the ancient Scythians and 
other nations. One of the numerous modes 
was as follows:—A number of arrows, being 
marked, were put into a bag or quiver, and 
drawn out at random; and the marks or 
words on the arrow drawn determined what 
was to happen. See Ezek. xxi. 21. 

Belon (be-Ion), Pierre, French natural¬ 
ist, born 1517, murdered by robbers 1564. 
He was educated as a physician, and trav¬ 
elled in Germany, Greece, Asia Minor, 
Egypt, &c. His chief work was a Natural 
History of Birds, 1555. 

Beloo'chistan. See Baluchistan. 

Belpas'so, a town of Sicily, on the south¬ 
ern slope of Mount Etna, in the province 
of Catania, and 8 miles from the town of 
that name. Pop. about 7500. 

Bel'per, a town, England, Derbyshire, in 
a valley, on the Derwent, 7 miles N. of 
Derby, with large cotton-mills, foundries, 
&c., and in the neighbourhood numerous 
collieries. Pop. 1891, 10,420. 

Belshaz'zar, the last of the Babylonian 
kings, who reigned conjointly with his fa¬ 
ther Nabonadius. He perished b.c. 538, 
during the successful storming of Babylon 
by Cyrus. This event is recorded in the 
book of Daniel; but it is difficult to bring 
the particulars there given into harmony 
with the cuneiform inscriptions. 

Belt, Belting, a flexible endless band, or 
its material, used to transmit motion or 
power from one wheel, roller, or pulley to 
another, and common in various kinds of 
machinery. Driving belts are usually made 
of leather or india-rubber, or some woven 
material, but ropes and chains are also used 
for the same purpose. 

Belt, The Great and Little, two straits 
connecting the Baltic with the Cattegat, 

451 


the former between the islands of Zealand 
and Funen, about 18 miles in average width; 
the latter between Funen and the coast of 
Schleswig, at its narrowest part not more 
than a mile in width. 

Bel'tane (a Celtic name of unknown ori¬ 
gin), a sort of festival formerly observed 
in Ireland and Scotland, and still kept 
up in a fashion in some remote parts. It 
is celebrated in Scotland on the first day 
of May (o.s.), usually by kindling fires on 
the hills and eminences. In early times 
it was compulsory on all to have their 
domestic fires extinguished before the Bel¬ 
tane fires were lighted, and it was customary 
to rekindle the former from the embers of 
the latter. This custom no doubt derived 
its origin from the worship of the sun. 

Belton, the capital of Bell county, Tex., 
55 miles northeast of Austin, the seat of the 
Chamberlain Institute; 2 banks and a Ma¬ 
sonic Temple. Pop. in 1890, 4300. 

Belu'chistan. See Baluchistan. 

Beluga (be-16'ga) ( Beluga arctica or Del- 
phinapterus leucas ), a kind of whale or dol¬ 
phin, the white whale or white fish, found 
in the northern seas of both hemispheres. 
It is from 12 to 18 feet in length, and is 
pursued for its oil (classed as ‘porpoise oil’) 
and skin. In swimming the animal bends 
its tail under its body like a lobster, and 
thrusts itself along with the rapidity of an 
arrow. A variety of sturgeon ( Acipenser 
huso) found in the Caspian and Black Sea 
is also called beluga. 

Be'lus, the same as Bel or Baal, a divin¬ 
ity of the ancient Babylonians. See Baby¬ 
lonia , Babel. 

Belvedere (bel've-der), in Italian arch, 
the uppermost story of a building open to 
the air, at least on one side, and frequently 
on all, for the purpose of obtaining a view 
of the country and for enjoying cool air. 
A portion of the Vatican in which several 
of the most important statues in the world 
are preserved has this name. 

Belzo'ni, Giovanni Battista (John Bap¬ 
tist), an enterprising traveller, was born at 
Padua in 1778, and died near Benin 1823. 
In 1803 he emigrated to England, where, 
being endowed with an almost gigantic 
figure and commensurate strength, he for a 
time gained his living as an athlete. In 
1815 he visited Egypt, where he made a 
hydraulic machine for Mehemet Ali. He 
then devoted himself to the exploration of 
the antiquities of the country, being sup¬ 
plied with funds by Mr. Salt, the British 



BEM-BENARES. 


consul-general. He succeeded in transport¬ 
ing the bust of Memnon (Raineses II.) from 
Thebes to Alexandria, from whence it came 
to the British Museum; explored the great 
temple of Rameses II. at Abu-Simbel; 
opened the tomb of Seti I., from which he 
obtained the splendid alabaster sarcopha¬ 
gus bought by Sir John Soane for £2000; 
and he also succeeded in opening the second 
(KingChephren’s)of the pyramids of Ghizeh. 
He afterwards visited the coasts of the Red 
Sea, the city of Berenice, Lake Moeris, the 
Lesser Oasis, &c. The narrative of his dis¬ 
coveries and excavations in Egypt and Nu¬ 
bia was received with general approbation 
He died during a projected journey to Tim- 
buctoo. 

Bern, Joseph, a Polish general, born at 
Tarnow, in Galicia, in 1795, died at Aleppo 
1850. His first service was in the French 
expedition against Russia in 1812. He 
served in the Polish army in the revolution 
of 1830, after which he proceeded to Paris, 
where for the next sixteen years he continued 
to reside, occupying himself partly with 
political schemes and partly with scientific 
pursuits. In 1848 he joined the Hungai’iau 
army, and in the following year obtained 
several successes against the Austrians and 
Russians; but after the defeat at Temesvar 
he retired into Turkey, where he embraced 
Mohammedanism and was made a pasha. 

Bembecidse (-bes'i-de), a family of wasp¬ 
like hymenopterous insects with stings, 
mostly natives of warm countries, and 
known also as Sand-wasps. The female 
excavates cells in the sand, in which she 
deposits, together with her eggs, various 
larvae or perfect insects stung into insensi¬ 
bility, as support for her progeny when 
hatched. They are very active, fond of 
the nectar of flowers, and delight in sun¬ 
shine. Bembex is the typical genus of this 
family. 

Bembo, Pietro, celebrated Italian scho¬ 
lar, born at Venice in 1470, died 1547. At 
Venice he became one of a famous society 
of scholars which had been established in 
the house of the printer Aldus Manutius. 
In 1512 he became secretary to Leo X., 
after whose death he retired to Padua. He 
was next appointed historiographer to the 
Republic of Venice, and librarian of the 
library of St. Mark. Pope Paul III. con¬ 
ferred on him, in 1539, the hat of a cardinal, 
and soon after the bishoprics of Gubbio 
and Bergamo. The most important of his 
works are: History of Venice from 1487 to 


1513, written both in Latin and Italian; 
Le Prose, dialogues in which the rules of 
the Italian language are laid down; Gli 
Asolani, dialogues on the nature of love; 
and Le Rime, a collection of sonnets and 
canzonets. 

Bem'bridge Beds, in geol. a fossiliferous 
division of the Upper Eocene strata, princi¬ 
pally developed at Bembridge in the Isle of 
Wight, consisting of marls and clays rest¬ 
ing on a compact, pale-yellow or cream-co¬ 
loured limestone, called Bembridge lime¬ 
stone. Their most distinctive feature is 
the mammalian remains of the Palseothe- 
rium and Anoplotherium. 

Ben (Hebrew, ‘son’), a prepositive syllable 
signifying in composition ‘son of,’ found in 
many Jewish names, as Bendavid, Benasser , 
&c. — Beni, the plural, occurs in several 
modern names, and in the names of many 
Arabian tribes. 

Ben, a Gaelic word signifying mountain, 
prefixed to the names of many mountains in 
Scotland north of the Firths of Clyde and 
Forth; as, Ben Nevis, Ben MacDhui, &c. 

Ben, Oil of, the expressed oil of the ben- 
nut, the seed of Moringa pterygosperma, 
the ben or horse-radish tree of India. The 
oil is inodorous, does not become rancid for 
many years, and is used by perfumers and 
watchmakers. 

Benares (be-na'rez; in Sanskrit, Vara¬ 
nasi), a town in Hindustan, North-west 
Provinces, administrative headquarters of a 
district and division of the same name, on 
the left bank of the Ganges, from which it 
rises like an amphitheatre, presenting a 
splendid panorama of temples, mosques, 
palaces, and other buildings with their 
domes, minarets, &c. Fine ghauts lead down 
to the river. It is one of the most sacred 
places of pilgrimage in all India, being the 
headquarters «of the Hindu religion. The 
principal temple is dedicated to Siva, whose 
sacred symbol it contains. It is also the 
seat of government and other colleges, and 
of the missions of various societies. Ben¬ 
ares carries on a large trade in the produce 
of the district and in English goods, and 
manufactures silks, shawls, embroidered 
cloth, jewelry, &c. The population, includ¬ 
ing the neighbouring cantonments at Sik- 
raul (Secrole), in 1891, was 222,420. The 
commissionership or division has an area 
of 18,337 sq. miles, and a pop. of 9,820,728 
of whom 76’53 per cent depend on agri¬ 
culture. The district has an area of 998 sq. 
miles, and a pop. of 892,694. 

452 



BENBECULA-BENCOOLEN. 


Benbec'ula, an island of Scotland in the 
Outer Hebrides belonging to Inverness-shire, 
and lying between North and South Uist, 
separated from the latter by a channel only 
^ mile broad and dry at low water. It is 
circular in shape, about 8 miles in dia¬ 
meter, low, flat, and infertile, with innu¬ 
merable lakelets and inlets of the sea. Pop. 
1781. 


Ben'bow, John, an English admiral, born 
in Shrewsbury about 1650, died 1702. For 
his skill and valour in an action with a Bar¬ 
bary pirate he was promoted by James II. 
to the command of a ship of war. William 
III. employed him in protecting the En¬ 
glish trade in the Channel, which he did 
with great effect, and he was soon promoted 
to the rank of rear-admiral. In 1701 he 



Benares, from the River. 


sailed to the West Indies with a small fleet, 
and in August of the following year he fell 
in with the French fleet under Du Casse, 
and in the heat of the action a chain-shot 
carried away one of his legs. At this criti¬ 
cal instant, being most disgracefully aban¬ 
doned by several of the captains under his 
command, the whole fleet effected its escape. 
Benbow, on his return to Jamaica, brought 
the delinquents to a court-martial, by which 
two of them were condemned to be shot. He 
himself died of his wounds. 

Bench, the dais or elevated part of a 
court-room where the judges sit. Hence 
the persons who sit as judges. The Kind's 
or Queen's Bench , in England, was formerly 
a court in which originally the sovereign 
sat in person, and which accompanied his 


household. The bench of bishops, or Epis¬ 
copal bench, is a collective designation of 
the bishops who have seats in the House of 
Lords. 

Benchers, in England, senior members 
of the Inns of Court who have the entire 
management of their respective inns, the 
power of punishing barristers guilty of mis¬ 
conduct, and the right to admit or reject 
candidates to the bar. 

Bencoo'len (Dutch, Benkoclen), a seaport 
of Sumatra, on the s.w. coast. The En¬ 
glish settled here in 1685, and retained the 
place and its connected territory till 1825, 
when they were ceded to the Dutch in ex¬ 
change for the settlements on the Malay 
Peninsula; since then Bencoolen has greatly 
declined, Pop. 6870, 



















































BEND-BENEDICT BTSCOP. 


Bend, in heraldry, one of the nine hon¬ 
ourable ordinaries, containing a third part 
of the field when charged and a fifth when 
plain, made by two lines 
drawn diagonally across the 
shield from the dexter chief 
to the sinister base point. 

The bend sinister differs 
only by crossing in the op¬ 
posite direction, diagonally 
from the sinister chief to 
the dexter base. It indi¬ 
cates illegitimacy. 

Bender', a town and fortress of Russia, in 
Bessarabia, on the Dniester. Its commerce 
is important, and it carries on some branches 
of manufacture. Pop. 24,625. 

Bender-Abbas, a seaport of Southern 
Persia opposite the island of Ormuz. Pop. 
8000. 

Ben'edek, Ludwig von, Austrian general, 
born 1804, died 1881. Fought against the 
Italians in 1848, and afterwards against the 
Hungarian patriots. He distinguished him¬ 
self at Solferino in the campaign of 1859; 
and in the war with Prussia in 1866 he 
commanded the Austrian army till after 
his defeat at Sadowa, when he was super¬ 
seded. 

Benedic'ite (L. ‘bless ye’), the canticle in 
the Book of Common Prayer in the mor¬ 
ning service, also called the Song of the 
Three Holy Children: ‘0, all ye works of 
the Lord, bless ye the Lord.’ It is as old 
as the time of St. Chrysostom. 

Ben'edict, the name of fourteen popes, the 
first of the name succeeding to the papal 
chair on the death of John III. in 574. 
The first deserving of notice is Benedict IX., 
who succeeded John XIX. in 1033, being 
placed on the papal throne as a boy of 
twelve years. His licentiousness caused him 
to be ignominiously expelled by the citizens, 
who elected Sylvester III. Six months 
after he regained the ascendency, and ex¬ 
communicated Sylvester; but finding the 
general detestation too strong to permit him 
to resume his chair, sold it to John Grati- 
anus, who assumed the title of Gregory VI. 
There was thus a trio of popes, and the em¬ 
peror, Henry III., to put an end to the 
scandal, deposed all the three. He died in 
1054. —Benedict XIII., a learned and well- 
disposed man, originally Cardinal Orsini 
and Archbishop of Benevento, became pope 
in 1724. He bestowed his confidence on 
Cardinal Coscia, who was unworthy of it, 
and abused it in gratifying his avarice. He 


died in 1730, and was succeeded by Clement 
XII.— Benedict XIV., Prospero Lamber- 
tini, born at Bologna in 1675, died 1758, 
a man of superior talents, passionately fond 
of learning, of historical researches, and 
monuments of art. Benedict XIII. made 
him, in 1727, bishop of Ancona; in 1728 
cardinal, and in 1732 archbishop of Bologna. 
In every station he fulfilled his duties with 
the most conscientious zeal. He succeeded 
Clement XII. in 1740, and showed himself 
a liberal patron of literature and science. 
He was the author of several esteemed re¬ 
ligious works. 

Benedict, St., the founder of the first 
religious order in the West; born at Nursia, 
in the province of Umbria, Italy, a.d. 480, 
died 543. In early youth he renounced the 
world and passed some years in solitude, 
acquiring a great reputation for sanctity. 
Being chosen head of a monastery his 
strictness proved too great for the monks, 
and he was forced to leave. The rule for 
monks, which he afterwards drew up, was 
first introduced into the monastery on Monte 
Cassino, in the neighbourhood of Naples, 
founded by him. His Regula Monachorum, 
in which he aimed, among other things, at 
repressing the irregular lives of the wander¬ 
ing monks, gradually became the rule of all 
the western monks. Under his rule the 
monks, in addition to the work of God (as 
he called prayer and the reading of religious 
writings), were employed in manual labour, 
in the instruction of the young, and in 
copying manuscripts, thus preserving many 
literary remains of antiquity. See Bene¬ 
dictines. 

Benedict, Sir Julius, pianist and com¬ 
poser, born at Stuttgart 1804, died at Lon¬ 
don 1885. He took up his residence in 
England in 1835, and was knighted in 1871. 
Principal works: the operas of The Gipsy’s 
Warning, Undine, St. Cecilia, Lily of Kil- 
larney, and Graziella. 

Benedict Biscop, an Anglo-Saxon monk, 
born of a noble Northumbrian family in 628 
or 629, died in the monastery of Wear- 
moutli 1690. At the age of twenty-five he 
accompanied Wilfrid on a pilgrimage to 
Rome. Here he lived for more than ten 
years, when he returned to England; but 
not very long after he again went to Rome 
on a mission from the King of Northumbria. 
On his way back he entered the Benedictine 
monastery of Lerins, in Provence, where he 
took the tonsure, and remained some time. 
On a third visit to Rome he was cornmis- 

m 



Bend. 







BENEDICTINE-BENEKE. 


sioned to return to England as assistant 
and interpreter to Theodoric, Archbishop of 
Canterbury. In 67 4 he founded a monas¬ 
tery at the mouth of the Wear, and endowed 
it with numerous books, pictures, and relics 
obtained by him on his various journeys to 
Home. He founded, in 682, a second monas¬ 
tery at Jarrow, dependent on that of Wear- 
mouth. His great pupil the ‘Venerable 
Bede,’ who was a monk in the monastery 
of Jarrow, and who wrote his life, was un- 
doutedly much indebted to the collections 
made by Benedict for the learning he ac¬ 
quired. 

Benedic'tine, a liqueur prepared by the 
Benedictine monks of the abbey of Fecamp, 
in Normandy, consisting of spirit (fine 
brandy) containing an infusion of the juices 
of plants, and said to possess digestive, anti- 
spasmodic, and other virtues, and to have 
prophylactic efficacy in epidemics. Made 
in the same way since 1510. 

Benedictines, members of the most fa¬ 
mous and widely-spread of all the orders of 
monks, founded at Monte Casino, about 
half-way between Rome and Naples, in 529, 



Benedictine Monk. 


by St. Benedict. No religious order has 
been so remarkable for extent, wealth, and 
men of note and learning as the Benedic¬ 
tines. Among the branches of the order 
the chief were the Cluniacs, founded in 910 
at Clugny in Burgundy; the Cistercians, 
founded in 1098, and reformed by St. Ber¬ 
nard in 1116; and the Carthusians from the 
Chartreuse, founded by Bruno about 1080. 
The order was probably introduced into 

455 


England about 600 by St. Augustine of 
Canterbury, and a great many abbeys, and 
all the cathedral priories of England, save 
Carlisle, belonged to it. In Britain the 
Benedictines were called Blackfriars, from 
the colour of their habit, which consisted 
of a loose black gown with large wide 
sleeves, and a cowl on the head ending in 
a point. The Benedictines have produced 
many valuable literary works. The fra¬ 
ternity of St. Maur, founded in 1618, had 
in the beginning of the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury 180 abbeys and priories in France, and 
acquired by means of its learned members, 
such as Mabillon, Montfaucon, and Mar¬ 
ine, merited distinction. They published 
the celebrated chronological work L’Art de 
Verifier les Dates, and edited many ancient 
authors. 

Benedic'tus (L., ‘blessed’), the song of 
Zacharias (Luke i. 68-79), introduced into 
the Book of Common Prayer in the morning 
service. 

Ben'efice, an ecclesiastical living; a church 
endowed with a revenue for the mainten¬ 
ance of divine service. Vicarages, rectories, 
perpetual curacies, and chaplaincies are 
termed benefices, in contradistinction to 
dignities, such as bishoprics, &c. 

Benefit of Clergy, was a privilege by 
which formerly in England the clergy ac¬ 
cused of capital offences were exempted 
from the jurisdiction of the lay tribunals, 
and left to be dealt with bv their bishop. 
Though originally it was intended to apply 
only to the clergy or clerks, latterly every 
one who could read was considered to be a 
clerk, and the result of pleading ‘ his clergy ’ 
was tantamount to acquittal. A layman 
could only receive the benefit of clergy once, 
however, but he was not allowed to go with¬ 
out being branded on the thumb, a punish¬ 
ment which latterly might be commuted for 
whipping, imprisonment, or transportation. 
Abolished in 1827. 

Benefit Societies. See Building Societies 
and Friendly Societies. 

Beneke (ben'e-ke), Friedrich Edward, 
a German philosophical writer, born 1798, 
died 1854. He began lecturing at Berlin, 
but his lectures were at first interdicted on 
account of their supposed materialistic ten¬ 
dency, and he removed to Gottingen. He 
returned to Berlin in 1827, and after the 
death of Hegel, whose philosophical views 
he opposed, he was appointed extraordinary 
professor of philosophy. His more important 
works are Psychological Sketches, Text-book 








BENEVENTO 

of Psychology as a Natural Science, System 
of Logic, Treatise on Education, Ground¬ 
work of a Physic of Ethics, written in direct 
antagonism to Kant’s Metaphysic of Ethics, 
&c. 

Beneven'to, a city of Southern Italy, the 
see of an archbishop, in a prov. of same 
name, on a hill between the rivers Sabato 
and Calore, occupying the site of the ancient 
Beneventum, and largely built of its ruins. 
Few cities have so many remains of anti¬ 
quity, the most perfect being a magnificent 
triumphal arch of Trajan, built in 114. The 
cathedral is a building of the twelfth cen¬ 
tury in the Lombard-Saracenic style. Pop. 
21,631. The prov. has an area of 680 sq. 
miles, and a pop. 1891, of 245,135. 

Benev'olences, a means of raising money 
by forced loans or contributions, first adopted 
by Edward IV., and employed frequently 
down to the time of James I. 

Benfey (ben'fl), Theodor, German Sans¬ 
krit scholar, born 1809, died 1881; professor 
of Sanskrit and comparative philology at 
Gottingen. Among his works were a Sans¬ 
krit Chrestomathy, Vollstandige Gramma- 
tik der Sanskritsprache, Practical Grammar 
of the Sanskrit Language, Sanskrit-Eng- 
lish Dictionary, &c. 

Bengal (ben-gal'), a presidency of British 
India which includes the whole of British 
India except what is under the governors of 
Madras and Bombay; area 490,000 square 
miles, pop. 142,440,000. But in this sense 
the term has no administrative meaning ex¬ 
cept as regards the army; and by the name 
Bengal is now usually understood the Lieu¬ 
tenant-governorship of Bengal, the largest 
in population, resources, and net revenue of 
the local governments of British India. It 
lies between 19° 18' and 28° 1 5' N. lat., and be¬ 
tween 82° and 97° E. Ion., and includes the pro¬ 
vinces of Behar, Chutia Nagpur, Orissa, and 
Bengal proper, the last comprising the united 
deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and 
stretching north to Sikkim, west to Behar, 
east to Assam, and south to the Bay of Ben¬ 
gal. The lieutenant-governorship has an 
area of 151,543 sq. miles, and a pop., 1891, 
of 71,346,987. The feudatory states con¬ 
nected with it have an aggregate area of 
35,834 sq. miles, and a pop. of 3,296,379. 

As a whole Bengal consists of plains, there 
being few remarkable elevations, though it 
is surrounded with lofty mountains. It is 
intersected in all directions by rivers, mostly 
tributaries of its two great rivers the Ganges 
and Brahmaputra, which annually, in June 


— BENGAL. 

and July, inundate a large part of the re¬ 
gion. These annual inundations render the 
soil extremely fertile, but in those tracts 
where this advantage is not enjoyed the soil 
is thin, seldom exceeding a few inches in 
depth. The Sundarbans or Sunderbunds 
(from being covered with the sunder tree), 
that portion of the country through which 
the numerous branches of the Ganges seek 
the sea, about 150 miles from E. to w. and 
about 160 from N. to S., is traversed in all 
directions by water-courses, and interspersed 
with numerous sheets of stagnant water. 
The country is subject to great extremes 
of heat, which, added to the humidity of 
its surface, renders it generally unhealthy to 
Europeans. The seasons are distinguished 
by the terms hot (March to June), rainy 
(June to October), and cold (the remainder 
of the year). The most unhealthy period is 
the latter part of the rainy season. The 
mean temperature of the whole year varies 
between 80° Fahr. in Orissa and 74° Fahr. 
in Assam, that of Calcutta being 79°. In the 
hill station of Darjeeling the mean is about 
54°, occasionally falling as low as 24° in the 
winter. The heaviest rainfall occurs in 
Eastern Bengal, the annual average amount¬ 
ing to over 100 inches, an amount greatly 
exceeded in certain localities. Besides rice 
and other grains, which form along with 
fruits the principal food of the population, 
there may be noted among the agricultural 
products indigo, opium, cane-sugar, tobacco, 
betel, cotton, and the jute and sunn plants. 
Tea is now extensively grown in some places, 
notably in Darjeeling district and Chitta¬ 
gong. Cinchona is cultivated in Darjeeling 
and Sikkim. The forests cover 12,000 sq. 
miles, the principal forest trees being the 
sil on the Himalaya slopes, sM and teak in 
Orissa. Wild animals are most numerous 
in the Sundarbans and Orissa, snakes being 
remarkably abundant in the latter district. 
The principal minerals are coal, iron, and salt. 
Coal is worked at Raniganj,in Bardwan dis¬ 
trict, where the seams are about 8 feet in 
thickness, and iron in the district of Blr-^ 
bhhm, in the same division. Salt is obtained 
from the maritime districts of Orissa. The 
principal manufactures are cotton piece- 
goods of various descriptions, jute fabrics, 
blanketing, and silks. Muslins of the most 
beautiful and delicate texture were for¬ 
merly made at Dacca, but the manufacture 
is almost extinct. Sericulture is carried on 
more largely in Bengal than in any other 
part of India, and silk weaving is a leading 

456, 



BENGAL 

industry in many of the districts. The com¬ 
merce, both internal and external, is very 
large. From Calcutta goods to the value 
of over £30,000,000 are annually exported. 
The chief exports are opium, jute, indigo, oil¬ 
seeds, tea, hides and skins, and rice; the 
chief import is cotton piece-goods. The 
foreign trade is chiefly with Britain, China, 
the Straits Settlements, France, the United 
States, and Ceylon. Internal communica¬ 
tion is rendered easy by a very complete 
railway and canal system, while the boat 
trade on the rivers is, for magnitude and 
variety, quite unique in India. The people 
of Bengal are mainly of Hindu race except 
in the valleys of Chittagong, where they 
are chiefly Burmese. Over 20,000,000 are 
Mohammedans in religion, more than double 
this profess Hinduism. The dialects spoken 
are Bengali in Bengal proper, Hindi in 
Patna division, and Urlya in Orissa. The 
first rudiments of education are usually 
given in the primary schools that have been 
developed out of the native schools, and are 
now connected with government. There 
are also a number of secondary and superior 
schools established by government, includ¬ 
ing eight government colleges. The highest 
educational institution is the Calcutta Uni¬ 
versity, the chief function of which is to 
examine and confer degrees. The popula¬ 
tion of Bengal beyond the capital, Calcutta, 
and its suburbs, is largely rural. There are 
altogether 33 towns with upwards of 20,000 
inhabitants, and 200 with over 5000, but 
many of these towns are mere collections 
of rural hamlets in which all the operations 
of husbandry are carried on. 

The first of the East India Company’s 
settlements in Bengal were made early 
in the seventeenth century. The rise of 
Calcutta dates from the end of the same 
century. The greater part of Bengal came 
into the hands of the East India Company 
in consequence of Clive’s victory at Plassy 
in 1757, and was formally ceded to the 
Company by the Nabob of Bengal in 1765. 
Chittagong had previously been ceded by 
the same prince, but its government under 
British administration was not organized till 
1824. Orissa came into British hands in 
1803. In 1858 the country passed to the 
crown, and since then the history of Bengal 
has been, on the whole, one of steady and 
peaceful progress. 

Bengal, Bat of, that portion of the Indian 
Ocean which lies between Hindustan and 
Far th er I ndia, or B u r m ah, Siam, and M al acca, 

457 


— BENI. 

and may be regarded as extending south to 
Ceylon and Sumatra. It receives the Gan¬ 
ges, Brahmaputra, and Irrawadi. Calcutta, 
Kangoon, and Madras are the most impor¬ 
tant towns on or near its coasts. 

Bengali, one of the vernacular languages 
of India, spoken by about 50,000,000 people 
in Bengal, akin to Sanskrit and written in 
characters that are evidently modified from 
the Devanfigari (Sanskrit). Its use as a lite¬ 
rary language began in the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury with poetry. Large numbers of Ben¬ 
gali books are now published, as also news¬ 
papers. A large number of words are bor¬ 
rowed from Sanskrit literature. 

Bengal Light, a kind of firework often 
used for signalling by night at sea, producing 
a steady vivid blue-coloured flame. 

Ben-gazi (ben-ga'zS), a town of N. Africa, 
the capital of Barca, the most important 
seaport of the country, though the harbour 
admits only small vessels. Pop. 18,000. 

Bengel (beng'l), Johann Albrecht, a 
German theologian, born in 1687, died in 
1752. He rendered good service by his 
criticism of the text of the New Testa¬ 
ment, and his Gnomon Novi Testamenti has 
passed through many editions, and is still of 
value. 

Benguela (ben-ga'la), a district belonging 
to the Portuguese on the w. coast of South 
Africa; bounded N. by Angola, and 8. by 
the Cunene river, which may be said to 
constitute also the uncertain eastern fron¬ 
tier; area, perhaps 150,000 sq. m. The 
country is mountainous in the interior, and 
thickly intersected by rivers and streams. 
Its vegetation is luxuriant, including every 
description of tropical produce, and animal 
life is equally abundant. Copper, silver, 
iron, salt, sulphur, petroleum, and other 
minerals are found. The natives are mostly 
rude and barbarous. Pop. estimated at 
2,000,000. The capital, also called Ben¬ 
guela, or San Felipe de Benguela, is situated 
on the coast, on a bay of the Atlantic, in a 
charming but very unhealthy valley. It 
was founded by the Portuguese in 1617, and 
was formerly an important centre of the 
slave-trade, but has now only a spasmodic 
trade in ivory, wax, gum copal, &c. Pop. 
about 3000. 

Beni (ba'ne), a river, South America, 
state of Bolivia. It rises in the eastern 
slopes of the Andes, and after a course of 
900 miles joins the Mamore to form the 
Madeira, which flows into the Amazon near 
Serpa. 


BENICARLO-BENNETT. 


Benicarlo, a Spanish town on the Me¬ 
diterranean, province of Castellon; the 
place of export of well-known red wines 
sent to Bordeaux to be mixed with clarets, 
or to England to be manufactured into port. 
Pop. 7922. 

Beni-Hassan, a village of Middle Egypt, 
on the east bank of the Nile, remark¬ 
able for the grottoes or catacombs in the 
neighbourhood, supposed to have formed a 
necropolis for the chief families of a city, 
Hermopolis, on the opposite bank, and ex¬ 
hibiting interesting paintings, &c. 

Beni-Israel, a race in the west of India 
(the Konkan sea-board, Bombay, &c.) who 
keep a tradition of Jewish origin, and whose 
religion is a modified Judaism; supposed to 
be a remnant of the ten tribes. 

Beni-Mzab, a race or tribe of Berbers 
that dwell in the Sahara near its northern 
border and recognize the supremacy of the 
French. They number about 60,000, of 
whom 15,000 are in the town Ghardaya. 
They are of peaceful habits, and numbers 
of them are employed in Algiers in various 
occupations. 

Benin', a negro kingdom of West Africa, 
on the Bight of Benin, extending along the 
coast on both sides of the Benin River, west 
of the lower Niger, and to some distance 
inland. The chief town is Benin (pop. 15,000), 
situated on the river Benin, one of the 
mouths of the Niger. The country, which 
gradually rises as it recedes from the coast, 
is well wooded and watered, and I'ich in 
vegetable productions. Cotton is indigen¬ 
ous, and woven into cloth by the women, 
and sugar-cane, rice, yams, &c., are grown. 
The religion is Fetichism, and human sacri¬ 
fices are numerous. There is a considerable 
trade in palm-oil. The name Benin for¬ 
merly extended over a much larger terri¬ 
tory. 

Benin, Bight op, part of the Gulf of 
Guinea, W. Africa, which extends into the 
land between the mouth of the river Volta 
and that of the Nun. 

Beni-Suef, the capital of a province of the 
same name in Middle Egypt, situated on 
the left bank of the Nile, and having the 
chief trade o t the Faioum Valley. It has 
cotton-mills and alabaster quarries, and an 
important annual market. Pop. 5000 to 
6000. 

Benit'ier, or Benatu'ra, a stone font or 
vase for containing holy water, usually 
placed in a niche in the chief porch or en¬ 
trance of a Roman Catholic church, some¬ 


times in one of the pillars close to the door, 
into which the members of the congrega¬ 
tion on entering dip the fingers of the right 
hand, and then cross themselves. 

Benjamin. Same as Benzoin. 

Benjamin, Judah P., “ the brains of the 
Confederacy,” born at St. Croix, W. I., 
1811, died at Paris, 1884; studied law in 
New Orleans; elected U. S. Senator for 
Louisiana 1857; joined (1861) Secession as 
a member of their cabinet; in 1865 escaped 
to England; soon became famous as a 
lawyer there. 

Benlo'mond, a mountain of Scotland in 
Stirlingshire, on the E. shore of Loch Lo¬ 
mond, rising to a height of 3192 feet and 
giving a magnificent prospect of the vale 
of Stirlingshire, the Lothians, the Clyde, 
Ayrshire, Isle of Man, hills of Antrim, &c. 

Ben-Mac-Dhui, or Ben-Muich-Dhui 
(-mik-do'i), the second highest mountain in 
Scotland, situated in the south - west of 
Aberdeenshire, on the borders of Banffshire, 
forming one of a cluster of lofty mountains, 
among which are Brae-riach, Cairntoul, and 
Cairngorm. Height, 4296 feet. 

Benne (ben'e) Oil, a valuable oil expressed 
from the seeds of Sesamum orientate and S. 
indicum, much cultivated in India, Egypt, 
&c., and used for similar purposes with olive- 
oil. Also called sesamuvi oil and ginyelly 
oil. 

Bennet. See Avens. 

Ben'nett, James Gordon, an American 
journalist, born in Banffshire, Scotland, 
1795, and educated at Aberdeen. He emi¬ 
grated to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1819 as 
a teacher, and went thence to Boston as a 
proof-reader. In 1822 he went to New 
York, and, after being connected with vari¬ 
ous papers, started the New York Herald 
in 1835. By his enterprise and not very 
scrupulous conduct of the journal it speedily 
became an enormous success, its yearly 
profit at his death being estimated at from 
a half to three quarters of a million dollars. 
He died in 1872, 

Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., son of the 
above, born 1841; proprietor of V. Y. Her¬ 
ald; at his father’s death projected Stan¬ 
ley’s expedition to Africa in search of Liv¬ 
ingstone—Jeauette polar expedition; asso¬ 
ciated with Mackay in Commercial Cable. 

Bennett, Willi am Sternd ale, an English 
composer, born in 1816 at Sheffield, where 
his father was organist; became pupil of the 
Royal Academy in 1826, studying under 
Cipriani Potter, Crotch, and Lucas, anc( 

458 



BENTHAM. 


BEN-NEVIS 


afterwards Moscheles. By the advice of 
Mendelssohn, whose friendship he had gained, 
he studied in Leipsic from 1836 to 1838, 
and his performances and compositions were 
held in high esteem by the younger German 
musicians, and especially by Schumann. 
After a period spent in teaching, conduct¬ 
ing, and composing, he was appointed pro¬ 
fessor of music at Cambridge in 1856, and 
he was knighted in 1871. He was tooentirely 
dominated by Mendelssohn’s influence to 
do great original work. He is best known 
by his overtures, the Naiads and Parisina; 
his cantatas, the May Queen and Woman 
of Samaria; and his little musical sketches, 
Lake, Millstream, and Fountain. He died 
in 1875. 

Ben-Ne'vis, the most lofty mountain in 
Great Britain, in Inverness-shire, imme¬ 
diately E. of Fort-William and the opening 
of the Caledonian Canal, at the south-wes¬ 
tern extremity of Glenmore. It rises to the 
height of 4406 feet, and in clear weather 
yields a most extensive prospect. An obser¬ 
vatory was established on its summit in 
May 1881, by the Scottish Meteorological 
Society. 

Ben'nigsen, Levin Augustus Count von, 
Russian commander-in-chief, born at Bruns¬ 
wick in 1745. After some years in the 
Hanoverian service he entered that of Rus¬ 
sia, 1773, distinguished himself in Turkey 
and Poland, took part in the conspiracy 
against Paul I., and was made general by 
Alexander I. In the war with France, 
1805-13, he played a most distinguished 
part, especially at the battles of Pultusk, 
Eylau, Borodino, Woronova, and Leipsic. 
He retired from the Russian service to his 
paternal estate in Hanover in 1818, and 
died 1826. 

Ben'nington, a town in Vermont, United 
States, where, on the 16th of August, 1777, 
General Stark at the head of 1600 American 
militia was victorious over the British. 
Pop. 6391. 

Ben-nut, the seed of Moringa ptcrygo- 
sperma, the ben tree of India, yielding the 
valuable oil of ben. See Ben, Oil of. 

Benserade (bans-riid), Isaac de, a French 
poet at the court of Louis XIV., born 1612, 
died 1691. He wrote a paraphrase of Job, 
various tragedies and comedies, chiefly be¬ 
tween 1635 and 1640, and a volume of 
rondeaux on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1673. 
His minor poems are good specimens of the 
humour of the time. 

Benshi'. See Banshee. 

m 


Bent-grass, a name applied to various 
wiry grasses such as grow on commons and 
neglected ground, including species of Ag- 
rostis, Arundo arenaria, Triticum jun- 
ceum, &c. 

Bentham (ben'tham), George, English 
botanist, nephew of Jeremy Bentham, born 
1800, died 1884. He was privately edu¬ 
cated, early attached himself to botany, and 
having resided in Southern France (where 
his father had an estate) in 1814-26 he pub¬ 
lished in French (1826) a work on The 
Plants of the Pyrenees and Lower Langue¬ 
doc. Having returned to England he 
studied law, and on this subject, as well as 
logic, he developed original views. Finally, 
however, he devoted himself almost entirely 
to botany, was long connected with the Hor¬ 
ticultural Society and the Linnaean Society, 
and from 1861 onwards was in almost daily 
attendance at Kew (except for a few weeks 
occasionally), working at descriptive botany 
from ten to four o’clock as a labour of love. 
Along with Sir J. D. Hooker he produced 
the great work of descriptive botany, Gen¬ 
era Plantarum; another great work of his 
was the Flora Australiensis (in 7 vols.). His 
Handbook of the British Flora is well 
known. 

Bentham (ben'tham), Jeremy, a distin¬ 
guished writer on politics and jurisprudence, 
born at London in 1749; educated at West¬ 
minster and Oxford; entered Lincoln’s Inn, 
1763. He was called to the bar, but did 
not practise, and, having private means, 
devoted himself to the reform of civil and 
criminal legislation. A criticism on a pas¬ 
sage in Blackstone’s Commentaries, pub¬ 
lished under the title A Fragment on Go¬ 
vernment, 1776, brought him into notice; 
and it was followed by a long list of works, 
of which the more important were: The 
Hard Labour Bill, 1778; Principles of 
Morals and Legislation, 1780; A Defence 
of Usury, 1787; Introduction to the Prin¬ 
ciples of Morals and Legislation, 1789; 
Discourses on Civil and Penal Legislation, 
1802; Treatise on Judicial Evidence, 1813; 
Paper relative to Codification and Public 
Instruction, 1817; and the Book of Falla¬ 
cies, 1824. His mind, though at once subtle 
and comprehensive, was characterized by 
something of the Coleridgean defect in re- 
spect of method and sense of proportion; 
and he is, therefore, seen at his best in works 
that underwent revision at the hands of his 
disciples. Of these M. Dumont, by his ex¬ 
cellent French translations and rearrange- 



BENTINCK - 

ments, secured for Bentham at an early date 
a European reputation and influence, and 
his editions are still the most satisfactory. 
In England James Mill, Romilly, John 
Stuart Mill, Burton, and others of indepen¬ 
dent genius, have been among his exponents. 
In ethics he must be regarded as the 
founder of modern utilitarianism; in polity 
and criminal law he anticipated or suggested 
many practical reforms; and his whole in¬ 
fluence was stimulating and humanizing. 
He was a man of primitive and genial man¬ 
ners, leading a quiet and unblemished life, 
in which perhaps the chief troubles were 
the refusal of his hand by Lord Holland’s 
sister, Miss Caroline Fox, and the refusal 
of his ready-made codes of law by Russia, 
America, and Spain. He died in London, 
6 th June, 1832, leaving his body for dis¬ 
section. His remains are to be seen at 
University College, London. 

Bentinck', Lord William Charles Ca¬ 
vendish, second son of the third Duke of 
Portland, born in 1774. He served in Flan¬ 
ders, in Italy under Suwaroff, and in Egypt; 
was governor of Madras 1803-5; and com¬ 
manded a brigade at Corunna. In 1810 
he was British plenipotentiary and com¬ 
mander-in-chief of the troops in Sicily; and 
in 1813 headed an expedition into Catalonia. 
In 1814 he endeavoured to stimulate a 
revolt against the French in Italy and took 
possession of Genoa. The same year he re¬ 
turned to England and entered Parliament. 
In 1827 he was sent to India as governor- 
general. Many wholesome measures marked 
his administration, which lasted till 1835, 
when he returned and became M.P. for 
Glasgow. He died in 1839. 

Bentinck', Lord William George Fre¬ 
derick Cavendish, son of the fourth Duke 
of Portland, born in 1802. He entered the 
army, but quitted it to become private 
secretary to Canning, and in 1827 entered 
Parliament. Up to 1846 he was a warm 
adherent of Sir Robert Peel; but in that 
year came forward as leader of the Pro¬ 
tectionists in the House of Commons, aban¬ 
doning the turf, in which he had long reigned 
supreme. With the assistance of Disraeli 
he maintained this position for two years, 
and though often illogical, and sometimes 
unscrupulous in his statements, he never¬ 
theless commanded much attention by the 
vigour and earnestness of his oratory and 
deportment. He died in 1848. 

Bentley, Richard, great English classical 
scholar and critic, born near Wakefield, 


- BENTLEY. 

Yorkshire, in 1662. At the age of fourteen 
he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, 
where he took the degree of B.A. in 16»0. 
In 1682 he became a master of Spalding 
School, and in the following year was ap¬ 
pointed tutor to Dr. Stillingfleet’s son. He 
lived in Dr. Stillingfleet’s house during 
1683-89, studying deeply, and accompanied 
his pupil to Oxford. In 1684 he took his 
M.A. degree at Cambridge, and in 1689 at 
Oxford, where two years later he won im¬ 
mediate reputation by the publication of his 
epistle to Mill on the Greek Chronicle of 
Malelas. Dr. Stillingfleet having been 
raised to the bishopric of Worcester made 
Bentley his chaplain, and in 1692 a preben¬ 
dary in his cathedral. The same year he 
delivered the first series of the Boyle Lec¬ 
tures, his subject being a confutation of 
atheism. In 1694 he was appointed keeper 
of the royal library at St. James’s Palace, 
and in 1696 came into residence there. Two 
or three years after began his famous con¬ 
troversy with the Hon. Charles Boyle, 
afterwards Earl of Orrery, relative to the 
genuineness of the Greek Epistles of Pha- 
laris, an edition of which was published 
by Boyle, then a student at Christ Church, 
Oxford. In this dispute Bentley was com¬ 
pletely victorious, though the greatest wits 
and critics of the age, including Pope, Swift, 
Garth, Atterbury, Aldrich, Dodwell, and 
Conyers Middleton came to Boyle’s assis¬ 
tance. Bentley’s Dissertation on the Epistles 
of Phalaris appeared in 1699—‘a monument 
of controversial genius’—‘a storehouse of 
exact and penetrating erudition.’ In 1700 he 
was presented to the mastership of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, and from this period 
until 1738 he was at feud with the fellows 
of that college. A lawsuit, which lasted more 
than twenty years, was decided against him, 
but his opponents were unable to carry out 
the sentence depriving him of his mastership. 
In 1711 he published an edition of Horace, 
and in 1713 his remarks on Collins’s Dis¬ 
course on Free-thinking, by Phileleutherus 
Lipsiensis. He was appointed regius pro¬ 
fessor of divinity in 1716. In 1726 he pub¬ 
lished an edition of Terence and Phsedrus. 
He meditated an edition of Homer, but left 
only notes. In Homeric criticism he has 
the merit of having detected the loss of the 
letter ‘digamma’ (which see) from the 
written texts. His last work was an edition 
of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with conjectural 
emendations (1732). He died in 1742. 

Benton, Thomas Hart, born in Orange 

460 



BENUE — 

County, N. C., 1782, died at Washington, 
1858; American Senator and lawyer; a 
most distinguished citizen. 

Benu4, or Binu^: (ben'u-a, bin'u-a; 
‘mother of waters’), a river of Africa, 
the greatest tributary of the Niger, which 
it enters from the east about 250 miles 
above its mouth. Dr. Barth came upon the 
river in 1851, and its course was partly 
traced by Dr. W. Balfour Baikie, but its 
source was only reached (by Flegel) in 1883. 
This lies near the intersection of lat. 8° N. 
and Ion. 14“" e. 

Benyowsky (ben-i-ov'ski), Maurice 
Augustus, Count of, born in Hungary 
1741; served in the Seven Years’ War; and 
in 1769 was made prisoner while fighting for 
the Polish Confederacy. Exiled to Kamt- 
chatka, he gained the affections of the gover¬ 
nor s daughter, who assisted him to escape 
with his companions in 1771. They visited 
Japan, Macao, &c., and then went to 
France. The French government having re¬ 
quested him to form a colony in Madagas¬ 
car he sailed thither, and was made king in 
1776 by the native chiefs. He broke with 
the French government, sought private aid 
in England and America, sailed again to 
Madagascar in 1785, and was killed fighting 
against the French in 1786. His memoirs 
were published in 1790. 

Benzer'ta. See Bizerta. 

Ben'zine (C 6 H 6 ), a liquid hydrocarbon 
obtained from coal-tar and petroleum. It 
may also be got by distilling 1 part of crys¬ 
tallized benzoic acid intimately mixed with 
3 parts of slaked lime. It is quite colour¬ 
less, of a peculiar, ethereal, agreeable odour, 
is used by manufacturers of india-rubber 
and gutta-percha, on account of its great 
solvent powers, in the preparation of var¬ 
nishes, and for cleaning gloves, removing 
grease-spots from woollen and other cloths, 
&c., on account of its dissolving fats and 
resins. It is highly inflammable. 

Benzole Acid (C 7 H c OJ, a vegetable acid 
obtained from benzoin and other resins and 
balsams, as those of Peru and Tolu. It 
forms light feathery needles; taste pungent 
and bitterish; odour slightly aromatic. 

Benzoic Ether, a colourless oily liquid, 
with a feeble aromatic smell and a pungent 
aromatic taste, obtained by distilling to¬ 
gether 4 parts alcohol, 2 of crystallized 
benzoic acid, and 1 of concentrated hydro¬ 
chloric acid. 

Ben'zoin (Ar. luban javoi, ‘Javanese in¬ 
cense’), a solid, brittle, vegetable substance, 

461 


BEOWULF. 

the concrete resinous juice flowing from 
incisions in the stem or branches of the 
Styrax Benzoin, a tree 70 or 80 feet high, 
nat. order Styracacese. In commerce several 
varieties are distinguished, of which the 
yellow, the Siam, the amygdaloidal — the 



last containing whitish tears of an almond 
shape—and Sumatra firsts are the finest. 
It is imported from Siam, Singapore, Bom¬ 
bay, and occasionally from Calcutta; it is 
found also in South America. The pure 
benzoin consists of two principal substances, 
viz. a resin, and an acid termed benzoic 
(which see). It has little taste, but its smell 
is fragrant when rubbed or heated, and it 
is used as incense in the Greek and Roman 
Catholic churches. It is insoluble in water, 
but soluble in alcohol, in which form it is 
used as a cosmetic and in pharmacy. Ben¬ 
zoin may be produced by the contact of 
alkalies with the commercial oil of bitter 
almonds. It is also known as benjamin, or 
gum benjamin. 

Benzole (-zol'). Same as Benzine. 

Ben'zoline, a name of liquids of the same 
kind as benzine. 

Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon epic, the only 
existing MS. of which belongs to the eighth 
or ninth century, and is in the Cottonian 
Library (British Museum). From internal 
evidence it is concluded that the poem in its 
essentials existed prior to the Anglo-Saxon 
colonization of Britain, and that it must be 
regarded either as brought to Britain by 
the Teutonic invaders, or as an early Anglo- 
Saxon translation of a Danish legend. From 
the allusions in it to Christianity, however, 
it must have received considerable modifica¬ 
tions from its original form. It recounts 
the adventures of the hero Beowulf, espe- 







feEtUNGER-BERBEIU. 


cially his delivery of the Danish kingdom 
from the monster Grendel and his equally 
formidable mother, and, lastly, the slaughter 
by Beowulf of a fiery dragon, and his death 
from wounds received in the conflict. The 
character of the hero is attractive through 
its noble simplicity and disregard of self. 
The poem, which is the longest and most 
important in Anglo-Saxon literature, is in 
many points obscure, and the MS. is some¬ 
what imperfect. 

Beranger (ba-riin-zha), Pierre Jean de, 
French lyric poet, born in Paris 19 th 
August, 1780, in the house of his grand¬ 
father, a tailor, in the Rue Montorgueil. 
His father was a restless and scheming man, 



B4ranger. 


and young Beranger, after witnessing from 
the roof of his school the destruction of the 
Bastille, was placed under the charge of an 
aunt who kept a tavern at Peronne. At 
the age of fourteen he was apprenticed 
to a printer in Peronne, but was ultimately 
summoned to Paris to assist his father in his 
financing and plotting. After many hard¬ 
ships he withdrew in disgust from the at¬ 
mosphere of chicanery and intrigue in which 
he found himself involved, betook himself 
to a garret, did what literary hack-work 
he could, and made many ambitious at¬ 
tempts in poetry and drama. Reduced to 
extremity, he applied in 1804 to Lucien 
Bonaparte for assistance, and succeeded in 
obtaining from him, first, a pension of 1000 
francs, and five years later a university 
clerkship. Although as yet unprinted, many 
of his songs had become extremely popular, 
and in 1815 the first collection of them was 
published. A second collection, published 
in 1821, made him obnoxious to the Bourbon 
government, and in addition to being dis¬ 


missed from his office in the university he 
was sentenced to three months’ imprison¬ 
ment and a fine of 500 francs. A third 
collection appeared in 1825, and in 1828 a 
fourth, which subjected him to a second 
state prosecution, an imprisonment of nine 
months, and a fine of 10,000 francs. In 
1833 he published his fifth and last collec¬ 
tion, thereafter remaining silent till his 
death. Shortly after the revolution of Feb¬ 
ruary, 1848, he was elected representative 
of the department of the Seine in the con¬ 
stituent assembly, but sent in his resignation 
in the month of May of same year. He 
died at Paris on July 16, 1857. From first 
to last he kept in sympathetic touch with 
the French people in all their humours, 
social and political, influencing men in the 
mass more than any lyric poet of modern 
times. In private life he was the most 
amiable and benevolent of men, living un¬ 
obtrusively -with his old friend Judith 
Frbre, who died a few months before 
him. 

Berar', otherwise known as the Hydera¬ 
bad Assigned Districts, a province of India, 
in the Deccan, under the British resident 
at Haidarabad; area, 17,711 square miles, 
consisting chiefly of an elevated valley at 
the head of a chain of ghauts. It is watered 
by several affluents of the Godavari and by 
the Tapti, and has a fertile soil, producing 
some of the best cotton, millet, and wheat 
crops in India. The two principal towns 
of Berar are Amraoti (pop. 23,550) and 
Khamgaon (12,390). Coal and iron-ore 
are both found in the province, the pop. 
of which is 2,672,673. Exports, £3,456,348; 
imports, £2,100,903. Berar was assigned 
by the Nizam to the British government in 
1853 in security of arrears due. 

Berat', a fortified town of European 
Turkey, in Albania; residence of a pasha 
and a Greek archbishop. Pop. 12,000. 

Berber, a town on the right bank of the 
Nile, about 20 miles below the confluence 
of the Atbara, an important station for mer¬ 
chants on the route from Sennaar and 
Khartoum to Cairo, and also from Suakim. 
Pop. 20,000. 

Berbe'ra, a port and trading place on the 
Somali coast, East Africa, on a bay afford¬ 
ing convenient anchorage, in the Gulf of 
Aden. It was taken possession of by the 
British along with a strip of adjacent terri¬ 
tory in 1885; and there is now a small 
Indian force stationed here. A good deal 
of trade is carried on with Aden. 

462 



BERBER! N-BERENICE. 


Ber berin, a golden-yellow colouring mat¬ 
ter obtained from several species of Berberis 
or barberry. 

Ber'beris, a genus of plants, type of the 
nat. order Berberidacese or barberries. See 
Barberry. 

Ber'bers, a people spread over nearly the 
whole of Northern Africa, from whom the 
name Barbary is derived. The chief 
branches into which the Berbers are divided 
are, first, the Amazirgh or Amazigh, of Nor¬ 
thern Marocco, numbering from 2,000,000 
to 2,500,000. They are for the most part 
quite independent of the Sultan of Marocco, 
and live partly under chieftains and heredi¬ 
tary princes and partly in small republican 
communities. Second, the Shuluh, Shillooh, 
or Shellakah, who number about 1,450,000, 
and inhabit the south of Marocco. They 
are more highly civilized than the Amazirgh. 
Third, the Kabyles in Algeria and Tunis, 
who are said to number 960,000 souls; and 
fourth, the Berbers of the Sahara, who in¬ 
habit the oases. Among the Sahara Ber¬ 
bers the most remarkable are the Beni- 
Mzab and the Tuaregs. To these we may 
also add the Guanches of the Canary 
Islands, now extinct, but undoubtedly of 
the same race. The Berbers generally are 
about the middle height; their complexion 
is brown, and sometimes almost black, 
with brown and glossy hair. They are 
sparely built, but robust and graceful; the 
features approach the European type. 
Their language has affinities to the Semitic 
group, but Arabic is spoken along the coast. 
They are believed to represent the ancient 
Mauritanians, Numidians, Gsetulians, &c. 
The Berbers live in huts or houses, and 
practise various industries. Thus they smelt 
iron, copper, and lead, manufacture gun- 
barrels, implements of husbandry, &c., 
knives, swords, gunpowder, and a species of 
black soap. Some of the tribes breed 
mules, asses, and stock in considerable 
numbers, but many of the Berbers live by 
plunder. 

Berbice (ber-bes'), a district of British 
Guiana watered by the river Berbice, and 
containing the town of Berbice or New 
Amsterdam, which has three churches and 
several public buildings, pop. 6000. 

Berchta (berA'ta; i.e. Bertha), in the 
folk-lore of S. Germany, a sort of female 
hobgoblin of whom naughty children are 
much afraid. Her name is connected with 
the word bright, and originally she was re¬ 
garded as a goddess of benign influence. 

463 


Berchtesgaden (berA'tes-ga-den), a town, 
Upper Bavaria, on the Achen or Alben in 
a beautiful situation, with a royal palace and 
villa, an ancient church, &c. There are 
important salt-mines in the neighbourhood, 
and the people are also renowned for artis¬ 
tic carvings in wood. Pop. 1780. 

Berdiansk', a seaport of Southern Russia, 
gov. of Taurida, on the north shore of the 
Sea of Azof, with an important export and 
inland trade. Pop. 12,465. 

Ber'ditchef (Pol. Beniyczew), a city of 
European Russia, gov. of Kiev, with broad 
streets, well-built houses, numerous indus¬ 
trial establishments, and a very large trade, 
having largely-attended fairs. Pop. 52,787, 
chiefly Jews. 

Bere'ans (orBarclavans,from their founder, 
Barclay), an insignificant sect of dissenters 
from the Church of Scotland, who profess 
to follow the ancient Bereans (see Acts xvii. 
10-13) in building their faith and practice 
upon the Scriptures alone, without regard 
to any human authority whatever. They 
hold that the majority of professed Chris¬ 
tians err in admitting the doctrine of a 
natural religion, natural conscience, &c., 
not founded upon revelation or derived from 
it by tradition; and they regard saving 
faith as attended by assurance. 

Berenga'rius of Tours, born 998 at Tours, 
a teacher in the philosophical school in that 
city, and in 1040 archdeacon of Angers; re¬ 
nowned for his philosophical acuteness as 
one of the scholastic writers, and also for the 
boldness with which in 1050 he declared 
himself against the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation, and for his consequent persecutions. 
He was several times compelled to recant, 
but always returned to the same opinions, 
until he was compelled in 1080 by the op¬ 
position of Lanfranc to retire to the Isle 
of St. Cosmas, near Tours, where he died 
in 1088. This Berengarius must not be con¬ 
founded with Peter Berenger of Poitiers, 
who wrote a defence of his instructor Abe¬ 
lard. 

Berenice (ber-e-nl'se; ‘bringer of victory ’), 
the name of several distinguished women of 
antiquity; in particular the wife of Ptolemy 
Euerggtes, King of Egypt. When her hus¬ 
band went to war in Syria she made a vow to 
devote her beautiful hair to the gods if he re¬ 
turned safe. She accordingly hung it in the 
temple of Venus, from which it disappeared, 
and was said to have been transferred to the 
skies as the constellation Coma Berenices. 
Also the wife of Mithridates the Great, king 



BERENICE 


BERGERAC. 


of Pontus; put to death by her husband 
(about 71 b.c.) lest she should fall into the 
hands of Lucullus. 

Berenice (ber-e-nl'se), anciently a town' 
on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, a 
place of great trade. 

Ber'esford, William Carr, Viscount, a 
distinguished commander, a natural son of 
the first Marquis of Waterford; born 1768. 
He entered the army, lost an eye in Nova 
Scotia, served at Toulon, and in Corsica, 
the West Indies, and Egypt. In 1806, as 
brigadier-general, he commanded the land 
force in the expedition to Buenos Ayres; 
and in 1808 remodelled the Portuguese 
army, receiving in return the titles Marshal 
of Portugal, Duke of Elvas, and Marquis 
of Santo Campo. He was subsequently 
engaged at Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, 
and Bayonne, and for his bravery at the 
battle of Toulouse was raised to the peer¬ 
age with the title of Baron (Viscount, 1823) 
Beresford. He died in 1854. 

Beret'ta. See Biretta. 

Berez'ina, a tributary of the Dnieper, in 
the Russian province of Minsk, rendered 
famous by the disastrous passage of the 
French army under Napoleon during the re¬ 
treat from Moscow, Nov. 27-29, 1812. 

Berezoff', a town in Western Siberia, gov¬ 
ernment of Tobolsk, on a branch of the 
Obi, the entrepot of a large fur and skin 
district. Pop., chiefly Cossack, 1900. 

Berg, an ancient duchy of Germany, 
on the Rhine. After it had been long con¬ 
solidated with the Prussian dominions Na¬ 
poleon revived the title, and conferred it, 
with an enlarged territory, on Murat (1806), 
and afterwards on his nephew Louis Na¬ 
poleon. At the Congress of Vienna, in 
1815, the whole was given to Prussia, and 
it is now included in governments Arns- 
berg, Cologne, and Diisseldorf. 

Ber'gama (ancient, Pergamos), town, Tur¬ 
key in Asia, north of Smyrna; contains fine 
ruins of a Roman palace, &c. Pop. about 
10 , 000 . 

Ber'gamo, a town of North Italy, capital 
of the province of Bergaino (1028 sq. miles, 
390,775 inhabitants), consists of two parts, 
the old town situated on hills and having 
quite an ancient appearance, and the new 
town almost detached and on the plain. It 
has a cathedral, an interesting church of the 
12th century, a school of art, picture-gallery, 
&c. It trades largely in silk, silk goods, 
corn, &c., has the largest annual fair in N. 
Italy, and extensive manufactures. The 


comic characters in the Italian masked 
comedy are Bergamese, or affect the Ber- 
gamese dialect. Pop. 23,819. 

Ber'gamot, a fruit-tree, a variety or spe¬ 
cies of the genus Citrus , variously classed 
with the orange, Citrus AuranUum, the lime, 
Citrus Limetta, or made a distinct species as 
Citrus Bergamia. It is probably of eastern 
origin though now grown in S. Europe, and 
bears a pale-yellow pear-shaped fruit with 
a fragrant and slightly acid pulp. Its essen¬ 
tial oil is in high esteem as a perfume.— 
Bergamot is also a name given to a number 
of different pears. 

Ber'gedorf, a town and district in the ter¬ 
ritory of Hamburg. Pop. 14,849. 

Bergen (ber'gen), a seaport on the w. 
coast of Norway, the second town of the 
kingdom, about 25 miles from the open sea, 
on a bay of the Byfiord, which forms a safe 
harbour, shut in by hills which encircle the 
town on the land side, and promote perpe¬ 
tual rains. The town is well built, but has 
many narrow streets, and houses mostly of 
wood; with cathedral, museum, &c. The 
trade is large, timber, tar, train-oil, cod- 
liver oil, hides, and particularly dried fish 
(stock-fish) being exported in return for 
corn, wine, brandy, coffee, cotton, woollens, 
and sugar. In 1445 a factory w r as estab¬ 
lished here by the Hanseatic cities of Ger¬ 
many. Pop. 46,552. 

Bergen-op-zoom (ber' gen - op - zom ), a 
town, Holland, in a marshy situation on the 
Scheldt, 20 miles N.N.w. of Antwerp. It 
w r as formerly of great strength, both from 
the morasses surrounding it and from its 
fortifications, and successfully resisted the 
attacks of the Duke of Parma in 1581 and 
1588, and of Spinola in 1622, but was taken 
by the French in 1747 and 1794, and unsuc¬ 
cessfully attempted by the British in 1814. 
Pop. 9139. 

Bergerac (barzh - rak), town, France, 
department of the Dordogne. It has iron¬ 
works, manufactures paper, hosiery, earthen¬ 
ware, liqueurs, &c., and gives its name to 
the wine of the Dordogne district, sometimes 
termed in France petit champagne. Pop. 
15,042. 

Bergerac (barzh-rak), Savinien Cyrano 
DE, a French writer, born 1620; composed 
at college Le Pedant Joue, comedy, which 
furnished hints for Moliere’s Fourberies de 
Scapin; entered the army and won a high 
reputation for bravery, but was disabled by 
wounds. Notwithstanding these, however, 
he w r as throughout life a notorious duellist 

464 



BERGHAUS-BERGMEHL. 


and universally dreaded. His best-known 
works, which show a strong but eccentric 
intelligence, are his Histoire Comique des 
Etats et Empires de la Lune, and Histoire 
Comique du Soleil, which find kinship with 
Lucian’s Veracious History, certain portions 
of Rabelais, and Swift’s Voyage to Laputa. 
He died in 1655 at Paris. 

Berghaus (berA'hous), Heinrich, Ger¬ 
man geographer, born 1797, died 1884. He 


served in 1815 in the German army in 
France, and was from 1816 to 1821 em¬ 
ployed in trigonometrical survey of Prussia 
under the war department. From 1824 to 
1855 he was professor of applied mathema¬ 
tics in the Berlin Academy of Architecture. 
Besides his various maps and his Great 
Physical Atlas, he published Allgemeine 
Lander-und-Volkerkunde (6 vols.), 1837- 
41; Die Volker des Erdballs (2 vols.), 1852; 



Bergen, from the N.W. 


Grundlinien der physikalischen Erdbesch- 
reibung, 1856; Grundlinien der Ethnogra¬ 
phic, 1856; Deutschland seit hundert .Jahren 
(5 vols.), 1859-62; Was man von der Erde 
Weiss (4 vols.), 1856-60; Sprachschatz der 
Sassen, or Low German dictionary (left in¬ 
complete), &c. 

Berghem (berVhem), Nicholas, painter, 
born at Harlem in 1624, pupil of his father, 
Peter Klaas, and also of Van Goyen and 
the elder Weenix. He produced a large 
number of works, chiefly landscapes with 
cattle, of which eleven are in the Louvre, 
eighteen at St. Petersburg, &c. He died 
at Harlem, 1683. Dujardin was among his 
pupils. 

Bergk (berk), Theodor, German classi¬ 
cal scholar, born 1812, died 1881. He was 
successively professor at Marburg, Frei¬ 
burg, and Halle, and latterly resided at 
Bonn. He rendered most service in the 
criticism and explanation of Greek lyric 
poetry. 

VOL. I. 


Bergman (berVman), Torbern Olof, a 
Swedish physicist and chemist, born 1735, 
died in 1784. He studied under Linnaeus 
at Upsala; in 1758 became Doctor of Phi¬ 
losophy and professor of physics there; and 
in 1767 became professor of chemistry. He 
succeeded in the preparation of artificial 
mineral waters, discovered the sulphuretted 
hydrogen gas of mineral springs, and pub¬ 
lished a classification of minerals on the basis 
of their chemical character and crystalline 
forms. His theory of chemical affinities 
greatly influenced the subsequent develop¬ 
ment of chemistry. 

Bergmehl (berg'mal), mountain-meal or 
fossil farina, a geological deposit (fresh¬ 
water) in the form of an extremely fine 
powder, consisting almost entirely of the 
siliceous frustules or cell-walls of diatoms. 
It has been eaten in Lapland in seasons of 
great scarcity, mixed with ground corn and 
bark. It is a variety of diatomite (which 
see). 


465 


30 
















BERGUE3-BERKSHIRE. 


Bergues (barg), a fortified town, France, 
dep. Nord, in a marshy district 5 miles s. 
of Dunkirk; formerly a place of much 
more importance, with a large monastery 
(St. Winoc). It has an interesting belfry 
tower of the sixteenth century. Pop. 5738. 

Ber'gylt (Sebastes norvegicus), a fish of 
the northern seas, belonging to the gurnard 
family, but resembling a perch, and of a 
beautiful reddish colour, sometimes found 
on the British coasts, and called Norway 
haddock and Norway carp. 

Berhampur, the name of two Indian 
towns: 1. A town and military station in 
the north-east portion of Madras Presi¬ 
dency, the head-quarters of Ganjam district, 
with a trade in sugar and manufactures of 
silks. Pop. 23,599.—2. A municipal town 
and the administrative head-quarters of 
Murshiddb^d district, Bengal; formerly a 
military station, and having still large bar¬ 
racks. It was the scene of the first overt 
act of mutiny in 1857. Pop. 23,605. 

Ber'iberi, a disease endemic in parts of 
India, Ceylon, &c., characterized by para¬ 
lysis, numbness, difficult breathing, and often 
other symptoms, attacking strangers as well 
as natives, and generally fatal. 

Be ring. See Behring. 

Berkeley, Alameda co., Cal., a flourish¬ 
ing town, seat of State University and 
Agricultural College; also State institution 
for deaf, dumb and blind. Pop. 1890, 5101. 

Berkeley (berk'li), Dr. George, Bishop 
of Cloyne in Ireland, celebrated for his ideal 
theory. He was born in Ireland in 1685 
(his father being an officer of customs); be¬ 
came fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in 
1707; went to England in 1713 ; travelled on 
the Continent in 1714, and again in 1716- 
20. In 1721 he was appointed chaplain to 
the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of 
Grafton. By alegacy from Miss Vanhomrigh 
(Swift’s Vanessa) in 1723 his fortune was 
considerably increased. In 1724 he became 
Dean of Derry. He now published his Pro¬ 
posals for the Conversion of the American 
savages to Christianity by the establishment 
of a College in the Bermuda Islands; and 
subscriptions having been raised, he set sail 
for Rhode Island in 1728, proposing to wait 
there till a promised grant of £20,000 had 
been got from government. The scheme 
never got a start, however, and he returned, 
now receiving the bishopric of Cloyne. He 
died suddenly at Oxford in 1753. Berkeley 
holds an important place in the history of 
philosophy. He maintains that the belief 


in the existence of an exterior material 
■world is false and inconsistent with itself; 
that those things which are called sensible 
material objects are not external but exist 
in the mind, and are merely impressions 
made on our minds by the immediate act 
of God, according to certain rules termed 
laws of nature, from which he never devi¬ 
ates; and that the steady adherence of the 
Supreme Sj>irit to these rules is what con¬ 
stitutes the reality of things to his creatures, 
and so effectually distinguishes the ideas per¬ 
ceived by sense from such as are the work 
of the mind itself or of dreams, that there 
is no more danger of confounding them 
together on this hypothesis than on that of 
the existence of matter. Berkeley was ad¬ 
mirable as a writer; as a man he was said 
by his friend Pope to be possessed of ‘every 
virtue under heaven.’ His most celebrated 
philosophical works are: Essay towards a 
new Theory of Vision, 1709; a Treatise on 
the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710, 
in which his philosophical theory is fully 
set forth; Three Dialogues between Hylas 
and Philonous, 1713; Alciphron, or the 
Minute Philosopher, 1732; and Siris, Philo¬ 
sophical Reflections and Inquiries concer¬ 
ning the Virtues of Tar-water, 1744. There 
were others of a mathematical and theologi¬ 
cal order, the only complete edition being 
that of Fraser, 3 vols. 1871. 

Berkeley, George Charles Grantley 
Fitzhardinge, sixth son of the fifth Earl 
of Berkeley, but second son after the legally 
recognized marriage; born 1800. From 
1832-52 he was Liberal member for West 
Gloucestershire. He became notorious in 
1836 for his assault upon Fraser, the pub¬ 
lisher, and his duel with Maginn for a hos¬ 
tile review in Fraser’s Magazine of his first 
novel, Berkeley Castle. Besides other 
stories, poems, and works upon travel, sport, 
&c , he published in 1865-66 his Life and 
Recollections in 4 vols., and in 1867 a 
volume of reminiscences entitled Anecdotes 
of the Upper Ten Thousand—both of which 
gave rise to much discussion. He died in 
1881. 

Berk'hampstead, Great, a town in Eng¬ 
land, Hertfordshire, with manufactures of 
straw-plait and wooden ware. Birthplace 
of Cowper. Pop. 4485. 

Berkshire, or Berks, a county of Eng¬ 
land, between Oxfordshire, Buckingham¬ 
shire, Surrey, Hampshire, and Wilts; area 
462,210 acres, of which eight-ninths are cul¬ 
tivated or under timber. A range of chalk 

466 
































































BERLAD-BERLIN. 


hills, entering from Oxfordshire, crosses 
Berkshire in a westerly direction. The 
western and central parts are the most pro¬ 
ductive in tiie county, which contains rich 
pasturage and excellent dairy farms, and 
is especially suited for barley and wheat 
crops. I he Thames skirts the county on 
the north, and connects the towns of Abing¬ 
don, Wallingford, Reading, Henley, Maiden¬ 
head, and Windsor with the metropolis. 


Few manufactures are carried on, the prin¬ 
cipal being agricultural implements and 
artificial manures, flour, paper, sacking and 
sail-cloth, and biscuits (at Reading). Malt 
is made in great quantities. The minerals 
are unimportant. Berkshire returns three 
members to the House of Commons, the 
county divisions being Abingdon, Newbury, 
and Wokingham. Pop. 1891, 238,446. 

Ber'lad, a town of Roumania, on the Ber- 



Berlin—Royal Theatre and New Church in the Gensdarmenmarkt. 


lad, a navigable tributary of the Sereth. 
Pop. 28,000. 

Berlen'gas, a group of rocky islands, about 
twelve in number, off the coast of Por¬ 
tugal. 

Berlichingen (ber'li- Aing-en), Gotz or 
Godfrey von, with the Iron Hand; bom at 
Jaxthausen, in Suabia, in 1480. He took 
part in various quarrels among the German 
princes; and having lost his right hand at 
the sie^e of Landshut, wore thereafter one 
made of iron. In constant feud with his 
baronial neighbours, and even with free 
cities like Nuremberg, he at last headed 
the insurgents in the Peasants’ War of 1525, 
and suffered imprisonment on their defeat. 
After the dissolution of the Suabian League 
he again fought against the Turks (1541) 
and the French (1544). He died in 1562. 
His autobiography, printed at Nuremberg 

467 


in 1731, furnished Goethe with the subject 
for his drama, Goetz von Berlichingen. 

Berlin', the largest town in Germany; 
capital of the Prussian dominions and of the 
German Empire, in the province of Bran¬ 
denburg, on a dreary sandy plain on both 
sides of the Spree, a sluggish stream, here 
about 200 feet broad. It has water com¬ 
munication to the North Sea by the Spree, 
which flows into the Havel, a ti'ibutary of 
the Elbe, and to the Baltic by canals con¬ 
necting with the Oder. The original por¬ 
tion of the city lies on the right bank of the 
river, and is irregularly built. The more 
modern portion is regular in its plan, and 
the streets are lined with lofty and well- 
built edifices mostly of white freestone, or 
brick covered with a coating of plaster or 
cement. The drainage is very defective. 
Of the numerous bridges, the finest is the 














































BERLIN — 

Castle (Schloss) Bridge, 104 feet wide, and 
having eight piers surmounted by colossal 
groups of sculpture in marble. The principal 
and most frequented street, Unter den 
Linden (‘under the lime-trees’), is about 
two-thirds of a mile in length and 160 feet 
wide, the centre being occupied by a double 
avenue of lime-trees. At the E. end of this 
street, and round the Lustgarten, a square 
with which it is connected by the Schloss 
Bridge, are clustered the principal public 
buildings of the city, such as the royal 
palace, the palace of the crown-prince, the 
arsenal, the university, the museums, royal 
academy, &c.; while at the w. end is the 
Brandenburg Gate, regarded as one of the 
finest portals in existence. Immediately 
beyond this gate is the Thiergarten (zoologi¬ 
cal garden), an extensive and well-wooded 
park containing the palace of Bellevue and 
places of public amusement. There are also 
several other public parks. The principal 
public buildings are the royal palace or 
Schloss, a vast rectangular pile, the museum 
(opposite the Schloss), a fine Grecian build¬ 
ing, with an extensive collection of sculpture 
and painting; the royal theatre is also a fine 
Grecian edifice. The royal library and palace 
of the emperor are united; the former con¬ 
tains above 900,000 volumes and 15,500 
manuscripts and charts. The arsenal (Zeug- 
haus), besides arms and artillery, contains 
flags and other trophies of great antiquity. 
The university, the exchange, the Italian 
opera-house, the principal Jewish synagogue, 
the town-hall, and the old architectural 
academy are all beautiful structures. The 
town contains altogether about twenty-five 
theatres, thirty hospitals, sixteen barracks, 
ten or twelve cemeteries, &c. The prevailing 
style of the newer buildings, both public 
and private, is Grecian, pure or Italianized. 
One of the most remarkable of modern 
monuments is that erected in 1851 to Fred¬ 
erick the Great in the Unter den Linden— 
the chef d'oeuvre of Rauch and his pupils. 
The literary institutions of the city are 
numerous and excellent; they include the 
university, having an educational staff of 
nearly 260 professors and teachers, and 
attended by over 4000 students, exclusive 
of 1200 to 1400 who do not matriculate; 
the academy of sciences; the academy of 
fine arts; and the technical high school or 
academy of architecture and industry (occu¬ 
pying a large new building in the suburb 
of Charlottenburg). The manufactures are 
various and extensive, including steam-en- 


- BERLIOZ. 

gines and other machinery, brass-founding 
and various articles of metal, sewing-ma¬ 
chines, paper, cigars, pottery and porcelain, 
pianos and harmoniums, artificial flowers, 
&c. In the royal iron-foundry busts, sta¬ 
tues, bass-reliefs, &c., are cast, together with 
a great variety of ornaments of unrivalled 
delicacy of workmanship. The oldest parts 
of the city were originally poor villages, and 
first rose to some importance under Markgraf 
Albert (1206-20), yet about two centuries ago 
Berlin was still a place of little consequence, 
the first important improvement being made 
by the great Elector Frederick William, 
who planted the Unter den Linden, and in 
whose time it already numbered 20,000 
inhabitants. Under his successors Frederick 
I. and Frederick the Great the city was 
rapidly enlarged and improved, the popu¬ 
lation increasing fivefold in the hundred 
years preceding the death of Frederick the 
Great and tenfold in the century succeeding 
it. Pop. in Dec., 1875, 966,872; in Dec., 
1885, 1,315,297 ; in Dec., 1890, 1,579,244. 

Treaty of Berlin, the treaty, signed 13th 
July, 1878, at the close of the Berlin Con¬ 
gress, which was constituted by the repre¬ 
sentatives of the six great powers and Tur¬ 
key. The treaty of San Stefano previously 
concluded between Turkey and Russia was 
modified by the Berlin treaty, which re¬ 
sulted in the division of Bulgaria into two 
parts, Bulgaria proper and Eastern Rume- 
lia, the cession of parts of Armenia to 
Russia and Persia, the independence of 
Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro, the 
transference of Bosnia and Herzegovina to 
Austi'ian administration, and the retrocession 
of Bessarabia to Russia. Greece w r as also 
to have an accession of territory. The 
British representatives were Beaconsfield, 
Salisbury, and Lord Odo Russell. By a 
separate arrangment previously made be¬ 
tween Britain and Turkey the former got 
Cyprus to administer. 

Berlin', a four-wheeled carriage consisting 
of an inclosed fore-portion for two occu¬ 
pants, and a back seat with a calash top for 
servants; invented in Berlin. 

Berlin', a town of Canada, prov. Ontario, 
about 60 miles w.s.w. of Toronto, with some 
manufactures. Pop. 1891, 7425. 

Berlin Blue. See Blue. 

Berlin Spirit, a coarse spirit distilled 
from potatoes, beet, &c. 

Berlioz (ber-li-os), Hector, a French 
composer, born in 1803. He forsook medi¬ 
cine to study music at the Paris Con- 

468 



BERM - 

servatoire, where he gained the first prize 
in 1830 with his cantata Sardanapale. 
For about two years he studied in Italy, 
and when on his return he began to pro¬ 
duce his larger works, he found himself 
compelled to take up the pen both in de¬ 
fence of his principles and for his own 
better maintenance. As critic of the Journal 
des Debats and feuilletonist he displayed 
scarcely less originality than in his music, 
his chief literary works being the Traite 
d Instrumentation, 1844; Voyage Musical, 
1845; Les Soirees d’Orchestre, 1853; and 
A travers Chant, 1862. His musical works 
belong to the Romantic school, and are 
specially noteworthy for the resource they 
display in orchestral colouring. The more 
important are Harold en Italie; Episode de 
la Vie d’un Artiste, and Le Retour a la 
Vie; Romeo and Juliette, 1834; Damnation 
de Faust, 1846; the operas Benvenuto Cel¬ 
lini, Beatrice and Benedict, and Les Troy- 
ens; L’Enfance du Christ, and the Requiem. 
He married an English actress, Miss Smith- 
son, but latterly lived apart from her. He 
died in 1869. After his death appeared 
Mdmoires written by himself. 

Berm, in fortification, a level space a 
few feet wide between outside slope of a 
rampart and the scarp of the ditch. 

Ber'mondsey, a pari, division of London, 
on the Surrey side of the Thames, between 
Southwark and Rotherhithe. Large tan- 
yards and wharfs. Pop. 86,602. 

Bermu'da Grass, Cynodon dactylon, a 
grass cultivated in the West Indies, United 
States, &c., a valuable fodder grass in warm 
climates. 

Bermu'das, or Somers Islands, a cluster 
of small islands in the Atlantic Ocean be¬ 
longing to Britain, and numbering about 
400 set within a space of about 20 miles 
long and 6 wide; area 20 square miles or 
12,000 acres; 18 or 20 only inhabited. 
They were first discovered by Juan Ber¬ 
mudez, a Spaniard, in 1522; in 1609 Sir 
George Somers, an Englishman, was wrecked 
here, and, after his shipwreck, formed the 
first settlement. The most considerable 
are St. George, Bermuda or Long Island 
(with the chief town Hamilton, the seat 
of the governor), Somerset, St. Davids, 
and Ireland. They form an important 
British naval and military station. An 
immense iron floating-dock, capable of re¬ 
ceiving a vessel of 3000 tons, was towed from 
London to the Bermudas in 1868. The cli¬ 
mate is generally healthy and delightful, 


- BERN. ’ 

but they have been sometimes visited by 
yellow fever. Numbers of persons from the 
U. States and Canada now pass the colder 
months of the year in these islands. About 
4000 acres are cultivated. The soil, though 
light, is in general rich and fertile; there 
is, however, little fresh water except rai 
water, preserved in cisterns. The inha. i 
tants cultivate and export potatoes, arrow 
root, onions, bananas, tomatoes, &c. Oranges 
and other fruits are also cultivated. The 
value of the total exports is usually about 
$400,000 to $450,000. The military sta¬ 
tioned here usually number about 1500. 
Pop. 1891, 16,000. 

Bern, a town in Switzerland, capital of 
the canton Bern, and, since 184s, of the 
whole Swiss Confederation, stands on the 
declivity of a hill washed on three sides by 
the Aar. The principal street is wide and 
adorned with arcades and curious fountains; 
the houses generally are substantially built 
of stone. Among the public buildings are 
the great Gothic cathedral, built between 
1421 and 1502; the Church of the Holy 
Spirit; the federal-council buildings (or par¬ 
liament house), commanding a splendid 
view of the Alps; the university; the town- 
house, a Gothic edifice of the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury; the mint; &c. Bern has an academy 
and several literary societies, and an excel¬ 
lent public library. Trade and commerce 
lively; manufactures: woollens, linens, silk 
stuffs, stockings, watches, clocks, toys, &c. 
Few cities have finer promenades, and the 
environs are very picturesque. Bern be¬ 
came a free city of the empire in 1218. 
In 1353 it entered the Swiss Confederacy. 
Pop. 47,793.—The canton of Bern has an 
area of 2660 square miles. The northern 
part belongs to the Jura mountain sys¬ 
tem, the southern to the Alps; between 
these being an elevated undulating region 
where is situated the Emmenthal, one of 
the richest and most fertile valleys in Swit¬ 
zerland. The southern part of the canton 
forms the Bernese Oberland (Upperland). 
The lower valleys here are fertile and agree¬ 
able; higher up are excellent Alpine pas¬ 
tures; and above them rise the highest 
mountains of Switzerland (Finsteraarhorn, 
Schreckhorn, Wetterhorn, Eiger, and Jung¬ 
frau). The canton is drained by the Aar 
and its tributaries; the chief lakes are those 
of Brienz, Thun, and Bienne. Of the surface 
over 58 per cent is under cultivation or 
pasture. Agriculture and cattle-rearing are 
the chief occupations; manufactures embrace 



BERNADOTTE-BERNARD. 


men, cotton, silk, iron, watches, glass, pot¬ 
tery, &c. Bienne and Thun are the chief 
towns after Bern. Pop. 532,164, 87 per 
cent being Protestants, and nearly as many 
German-speaking. 

Bernadotte (ber-na-dot), Jean-Bap¬ 
tiste-Jules, a French general, afterwards 
raised to the Swedish throne, was the son 
of an advocate of Pau; born in 1764. He 
enlisted at seventeen, became sergeant- 
major in 1789, and subaltern in 1790. In 
1794 he was appointed a general of division, 
and distinguished himself greatly in the 
campaign in Germany, and on the Rhine. 
In 1798 he married Mademoiselle Clary, 
sister-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte. The 
following year he became for a short time 
minister of war, and on the establishment 
of the empire was raised to the dignity of 
marshal of France, and the title of Prince 
of Ponte-Corvo. On the death of the Prince 
of Holstein-Augustenburg the heir appa¬ 
rency to the Swedish crown was offered to 
the Prince of Ponte-Corvo, who accepted 
with the consent of the emperor, went to 
Sweden, abjured Catholicism, and took the 
title of Prince Charles John. In the main¬ 
tenance of the interests of Sweden a serious 
rupture occurred between him and Bona¬ 
parte, followed by his accession in 1812 to 
the coalition of sovereigns against Napoleon. 
At the battle of Leipzig he contributed 
effectually to the victory of the allies. At 
the close of the war strenuous attempts 
were made by the Emperor of Austria and 
other sovereigns to restore the family of 
Gustavus IV. to the crown; but Bernadotte, 
retaining his position as crown-prince, be¬ 
came King of Sweden on the death of 
Charles XIII. in 1818, under the title of 
Charles XIY. During his reign agriculture 
and commerce made great advances, and 
many important public works were com¬ 
pleted. He died 8th March, 1844, and was 
succeeded by his son Oscar. 

Bernard (ber-nar), Charles de, a French 
novelist of the school of Balzac, born in 
1804, died in 1850. His best works were: 
Le Gerfaut, 1838; Ailes d’lcare, 1839; La 
Peau du Lion, 1841; L’Homme Serieux, and 
Le Gentilhomme Campagnard, 1847. Many 
of his earlier works, however, are also widely 
known, especially the Femme de quarante 
ans and the Noeud Gordien. He also wrote 
poems and dramatic pieces. 

Bernard (ber-nar), Claude, French phy¬ 
siologist, born 1813; studied at Paris; held 
in succession chairs of physiology in the 


Faculty of Sciences, the College of France, 
and the Museum, and died at Paris 1878. 
Amongst his many works may be cited his 
Researches on the Functions of the Pan¬ 
creas, 1849 ; on the Sympathetic System, 
1852; Experimental Physiology in its Rela¬ 
tion to Medicine, 1855-56 ; On the Physio¬ 
logical Propei'ties and Pathological Altera¬ 
tions of the various Liquids of the Organism, 
1859; and his Nutrition and Development, 
1860. 

Ber'nard, Great St., a celebrated Al¬ 
pine pass in Switzerland, canton Valais, on 
the mountain-road leading from Martigny 
in Switzerland to Aosta in Piedmont, and 
rising to a height of 8150 feet. On the E. 
side of the pass is Mount Velan, and on 
the w. the Pointe de Dronaz. Almost on 
the very crest of the pass, near a small lake 
on which ice sometimes remains throughout 
the year, is the famous Hospice, next to 
Etna Observatory the highest inhabited 
spot in Europe. It is a massive stone 
building, capable of accommodating seventy 
or eighty travellers with beds, and of shel¬ 
tering 300, and is tenanted by ten or fifteen 
brethren of the order of St. Augustine, who 
have devoted themselves by vow to the aid 
of travellers crossing the mountains. The 
institution is chiefly supported by subscrip¬ 
tions and donations. Ihe severest cold re¬ 
corded is 29° below zero Fah., but it has 
often been 18° and 20° below zero; and few 
of the monks survive the period of their 
vow. The dogs kept at St. Bernard, to 
assist the brethren in their humane labours, 
are well known. The true St. Bernard dog 
was a variety by itself, but this is now ex¬ 
tinct, though there are still descendants of 
the last St. Bernard crossed with a Swiss 
shepherd’s dog. The colour of these is yel¬ 
lowish, or white with yellow-gray or brown 
spots; head large and broad, muzzle short, 
lips somewhat pendulous, hanging ears. A 
pagan temple formerly stood on the pass, 
and classic remains are found in the vicinity. 
The hospice was founded in 962 by St. 
Bernard of Menthon, an Italian ecclesiastic, 
for the benefit of pilgrims to Rome. In 
May, 1800, Napoleon led an army of 30,000 
men, with its artillery and cavalry, into 
Italy by this pass. 

Bernard, Little St., a mountain, Italy, 
belonging to the Graian Alps, about 10 
miles s. of Mont Blanc. The pass across 
it, one of the easiest in the Alps, is sup¬ 
posed to be that which Hannibal qs§& 
Elevation of Hospice, 7192 fegti-, 



BERNARD - 

Bernard (ber-nar), Pierke Jose™, a 
French poet, to whom Voltaire gave the 
name Gentil-Bernard; born 1710. He was 
for some time the pet poet of the salons and 
of Madame de Pompadour’s ‘petits soupers,’ 
reading there translations from Ovid’s Art 
of Love and his own essays in erotic poetry. 
He was the librettist of Rameau’s Castor 
and Pollux. Died 1775. 

Ber'nard, Saint, of Clairvaux, one of the 
most influential ecclesiastics of the middle 
ages, born at Fontaines, Burgundy, 1091, 
of a noble family. In 1113 he became a 
monk at Citeaux; in 1115 first abbot of 
Clairvaux, the great Cistercian monastery 
near Langres. His austerities, tact, courage, 
and eloquence speedily gave him a wide 
reputation; and when, on the death of Ho- 
norius III. (1130), two popes, Innocent and 
Anaclete, were elected, the judgment of 
Bernard in favour of the former was ac¬ 
cepted by nearly all Europe. In 1140 he 
secured the condemnation of Abelard for 
heresy; and after the election of his pupil, 
Eugenius III., to the papal chair, he may 
be said to have exercised supreme power 
in the church. After the capture of Edessa 
by the Turks he was induced to preach a 
new crusade, which he did (1146) with dis¬ 
astrous effectiveness, the large host raised 
by him being destroyed. He died Aug. 20, 
1153. Seventy-two monasteries owed their 
foundation or enlargement to him; and he 
left no fewer than 440 epistles, 340 sermons, 
and 12 theological and moral treatises. He 
was canonized in 1174. 

Bernard de Ventadour, a troubadour of 
the twelfth century. The son of a domestic 
servant he was detected in an amour with 
the wife of his master, the Comte de Ven¬ 
tadour, and took refuge at the court of 
Raymond V., Comte de Toulouse. His 
songs, which were praised by Petrarch, are 
yet highly esteemed. 

Ber'nardine Monks, a name given in 
France to the Cistercians, after St. Bernard. 
See Cistercians. 

Bernar'do del Carpio, a half legendary 
Spanish hero of the ninth century, son of 
Ximena, sister of Alphonso the Chaste, by 
Don Sancho of Saldagua. Alphonso put out 
the eyes of Don Sancho and imprisoned him, 
but spared Bernardo, who distinguished 
himself in the Moorish wars, and finally 
succeeded in obtaining from Alphonso the 
Great the promise that his father should be 
given up to him. At the appointed time his 
father’s corpse was sent to him, and Ber- 

471 


- BERNERS. 

nardo in disgust quitted Spain for France, 
where he spent the remainder of his life as 
a knight-errant. 

Bernard of Morlaix, a monk of the abbey 
of Cluny under Peter the Venerable (1122- 
56). He wrote a Latin poem on Contempt 
of the World in about 3000 leonine dactyllic 
verses, from which are taken the popular 
hymns, Jerusalem the Golden, Brief Life 
is here our Portion, &c. 

Bernard of Treviso, a noted Italian 
alchemist, born at Padua 1406, died 1490. 
Most important work, Tractatus de secre- 
tissimo philosophorum opere chemico, 1600. 

Bernauer (ber'nou-er), Agnes, the daugh¬ 
ter of a poor Augsburg (or Biberach) citizen, 
whom Duke Albert of Bavaria, only son of 
the reigning prince, secretly married. He 
conducted her to his own castle of Voh- 
burg; but his father wishing to marry him 
to Anne, daughter of the Duke of Bruns¬ 
wick, he was compelled to proclaim his 
marriage with Agnes, giving her for resi¬ 
dence the castle of Straubing on the Danube. 
The incensed Duke of Bavaria, however, 
caused her to be seized in her castle during 
the absence of his son, accused her of sorcery, 
and had her flung bound into the Danube. 
Albert in revenge took arms against hi3 
father, but the Emperor Sigismund finally 
reconciled them. The Duke Ernest raised 
a chapel to the memory of Agnes, and Albert 
married the Princess of Brunswick. 

Bernay (ber-na), a town, France, dep. of 
Eure, on the Charentonne, with some manu¬ 
factures and a horse-fair, held in the fifth 
week in Lent, one of the largest in France. 
Pop. 7510. 

Bemburg (bern'burA), a town, Germany, 
duchy of Anhalt, on both sides of the Saale, 
divided into the old, the new, and the high 
town; the first two communicating by a 
bridge with the latter. It contains an oil- 
mill, breweries, distilleries; and manufac¬ 
tures paper, earthenware, copper and tin 
wares, &c. Pop. 18,593. 

Berne. See Bern. 

Ber'ners, John Bourchier, Lord, an Eng¬ 
lish baron, a descendant of the Duke of Glou¬ 
cester, youngest son of Edward III.; born 
1474; member of Parliament 1495-1529; 
aided in suppressing Cornish insurrection, 
1497; chancellor of exchequer, 1515; ambas¬ 
sador to Spain, 1518; for many years gov¬ 
ernor of Calais; died 1532. He translated 
Froissart’s Chronicles, 1523-25, and other 
works, his translation of the former being 
a sort of FnglisU classic, 



BERNERS-BERNINA. 


Berners, or Barnes, J uliana, Lady, an 
English writer of the fifteenth century, of 
whom little more is known than that she 
was prioress of the nunnery of Sopewell, 
near St. Alban’s. The book attributed to 
her is entitled in the edition of Wynkyn de 
Worde (1496), Treatyse perteynynge to 
Hawkynge, Huntynge and Eysshynge with 
an angle; also a right noble Treaty se on the 
Lygnage of Cot Armours, &c. The treatises 
on fishing and on coat-armour did not appear 
in the first St. Alban’s edition of 1481. It 
was for a long time the popular sporting 
manual. 

Bernese Alps, the portion of the Alps 
which forms the northern side of the Rhone 
Valley, and extends from the Lake of 
Geneva to that of Brienz, comprising the 
Finsteraarhorn, Schreckhorn, Jungfrau, 
Monk, &c. 

Bernhard (bern'hart), Duke of Weimar, 
general in the Thirty Years’ war, born 
1604, the fourth son of Duke John of Saxe- 
Weimar, entered the service of Holland, 
and afterwards the Danish army employed 
in Holstein. He then joined Gustavus Adol¬ 
phus, and in the battle of Ltitzen, 1632, 
commanded the victorious left wing of the 
Swedish army. In 1633 he took Bamberg 
and other places, was made Duke of Fran¬ 
conia, and after the alliance of France with 
Sweden raised an army on the Rhine to act 
against Austria. After many brilliant ex¬ 
ploits he captured Breisach and other places 
of inferior importance, but showed no dis¬ 
position to hand them over to the French, 
who began to find their ally undesirably for¬ 
midable. He rejected a proposal that he 
should marry Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess 
d’Aiguillon, seeking instead the hand of the 
Princess of Rohan. This the French court 
refused lest the party of the Huguenots 
should become too powerful. He died some¬ 
what suddenly in 1639 at Neuberg, the com¬ 
mon opinion being that he was poisoned by 
Richelieu. 

Bernhardt (ber-nar), Rosine Sara, a 
French actress, born at Paris 1844. Of 
Jewish descent, her father French, her 
mother Dutch, her early life was spent 
largely in Amsterdam. In 1858 she entered 
the Paris Conservatoire and gained prizes for 
tragedy and comedy in 1861 and 1862; but 
her debut at the Theatre Fran§ais in Iphi- 
g£nie and Scribe’s Valerie was not a success. 
After a brief retirement she reappeared at 
the Gymnase and the Porte Saint-Martin 
in burlesque, and m J867 at, the Od^on in 

T < • * . * w * 


higher drama. Her success in Hugo’s Ruy 
Bias led to her being recalled to the Theatre 
Frangais, since which she has abundantly 
proved her dramatic genius. In 1879 she 
visited London, and again in 1880, about 
which time she severed connection with the 
Com^die Frangaise under heavy penalty. 
In 1882 she married M. Damala, a Greek. 
Her tours both in Europe and America 
have as yet never failed to be successful, 
despite a somewhat painful eccentricity. 

Bern'haxdy, German classical scholar, 
born 1800, educated at Berlin, became pro¬ 
fessor at Halle in 1829, chief university 
librarian in 1844, died here 1875. Of his 
works the most valuable are his histories of 
the literature of Greece and Rome. 

Ber'ni, Francesco, Italian burlesque poet 
of the sixteenth century, born about 1490 in 
Tuscany. He took orders, and about 1530 
became a canon of the Florence Cathedral, 
where he lived till his death in 1536. A 
vague story asserts that Berni, who was 
intimate with both Alessandro de’ Medici 
and Ippolito de’ Medici, was requested by 
each to poison the other, and that on his 
refusal he was poisoned himself by Ales¬ 
sandro. He takes the first place among the 
Italian comic poets. He wrote good Latin 
verses, and his rifacimento of Boiardo’s 
Orlando Innamorato is au admirable work of 
its class.—Another Berni (Count Fran¬ 
cesco Berni, who was born in 1610 and 
died in 1673) wrote eleven dramas and a 
number of lyrics. 

Bernicia, an ancient Anglian kingdom 
stretching from the Firth of Forth to the 
Tees, and extending inland to the borders 
of Strathclyde. It was united with Deira, 
and became part of the kingdom of Nor¬ 
thumbria. 

Bernicle Goose. See Barnacle Goose. 

Bernier (bern-ya), Francois, French phy¬ 
sician and traveller, born at Angers about 
1625; set out on his travels in 1654, and 
visited Egypt, Palestine, and India, where 
he remained for twelve years as physician 
to the Great Mogul emperor Aurungzebe. 
After his return to France he published his 
Travels, an abridgment of the philosophy 
of Gassendi, a Treatise on Freedom and 
Will, and other works. He died at Paris 
in 1688. 

Bernina (ber-ne'na), a mountain in the 
Rhsetian Alps, 13,000 feet high, with the 
large Morteratsch Glacier. The Bernina 
Pass on the west of the mountain is 7695 

ft in height, 


47 ?. 



BERNINI 


BERNSTORFF. 


Bernini (ber-ne'ne), Giovanni Lorenzo, 
Italian painter, sculptor, and architect, 
born 1598. His marble group, Apollo and 
Daphne, secured him fame at the age of 
eighteen, and he was employed by Urban 
VIII. to prepare plans for the embellish¬ 
ment of the Basilica of St. Peter’s. The 
belfry and bronze baldachino for the high 
altar of St. Peter’s, the front of the College 
de Propaganda Fide, the church of St. 
Andrea a Monte Cavallo, the palace Bar- 
berini, the model of the monument of the 
Countess Matilda, and the monument of 
Urban VIII. are among his chief works. 
He declined Mazarin’s invitation to France 
in 1644; and though for a short time ne¬ 
glected after the death of his patron Urban, 
he speedily regained his position under Inno¬ 
cent X. and Alexander VII. In 1665 he 
accepted the king’s invitation to Paris, tra¬ 
velling thither in princely state and with 
a numerous retinue. After his return to 
Rome he was charged with the decoration 
of the bridge of St. Angelo, the tomb of 
Alexander VII., &c. He died in 1680. 

Bernis (ber-ne), Francois Joachim de 
Pierres de, cardinal and minister of Louis 
XV., born in 1715, died 1794. Madame 
de Pompadour presented him to Louis XV., 
who assigned him an apartment in the Tuile- 
ries, with a pension of 1500 livres. After 
winning credit in an embassy to Venice he 
rose rapidly to the position of minister of 
foreign affairs, and is possibly to be credited 
with the formation of the alliance between 
France and Austria which terminated the 
Seven Years’ war. The misfortunes of 
France being ascribed to him he was soon 
afterwards banished from court, but was 
made Archbishop of Alby in 1764, and in 
1769 ambassador to Rome, where he re¬ 
mained till his death. When the aunts of 
Louis XVI. left France in 1791 they fled 
to him for refuge, and lived in his house. 
The revolution reduced him to a state of 
poverty, from which he was relieved by a 
pension from the Spanish court. His verse 
procured him a place in the French Aca¬ 
demy. The correspondence of Bernis with 
Voltaire contains matter of interest. 

Bernouilli, or Bernoulli (ber-no-ye), a 
family which produced eight distinguished 
men of science. The family fled from Ant¬ 
werp during the Alva administration, going 
first to Frankfort, and afterwards to Bale. 
— 1. James, born at Bftle 1654, became 
professor of mathematics there 1687, and 
died 1705. He applied the differential cal- 

473 


cuius to difficult questions of geometry and 
mechanics; calculated the loxodromic and 
catenary curve, the logarithmic spirals, the 
evolutes of several curved lines, and dis¬ 
covered the so-called numbers of Bernouilli. 
—2. John, born at Bale 1667, wrote with 
his brother James a treatise on the differen¬ 
tial calculus; developed the integral calcu¬ 
lus, and discovered, independently of Leib¬ 
nitz, the exponential calculus. In 1694 he 
became doctor of medicine at B&le, and in 
1695 went, as professor of mathematics, to 
Groningen. After the death of his brother in 
1705 he received the professorship of mathe¬ 
matics at Bale, which he held until his 
death in 1748.—3. Nicholas, nephew of the 
former, born at BSle in 1687; in 1705 went 
to Groningen to John Bernouilli, and re¬ 
turning with him to Bale became there pro¬ 
fessor of mathematics. On the recommen¬ 
dation of Leibnitz he went as professor of 
mathematics to Padua in 1716, but re¬ 
turned to Bale in 1722 as professor of logic, 
and in 1731 became professor of Roman and 
feudal law. He died in 1759. The three 
following were sons of the above-mentioned 
John Bernouilli:— 4. Nicholas, born at 
Bale 1695, became professor of law there in 
1723, and died in St. Petersburg in 1726.-— 
5. Daniel, born at Groningen 1700; studied 
medicine. At the age of twenty-five he 
went to St. Petersburg, returning in 1733 to 
Bale, where he became professor of anatomy 
and botany, and in 1750 professor of natural 
philosophy. He retired in 1777, and died 
in 1782.—6. John, born at Bale in 1710, 
went to St. Petersburg in 1732, became 
professor of rhetoric at Bale in 1743, and 
in 1748 professor of mathematics. He died 
in 1790. The two following were his sons: 
—7. John, licentiate of law and royal 
astronomer in Berlin, born at Bale in 1744. 
He lived after 1779 in Berlin as director of 
the mathematical department of the Aca¬ 
demy. Died 1807.—8. James, born at Bale 
in 1759; went to St. Petersburg, where he 
became professor of mathematics; married 
a grand-daughter of Euler, but died in 1789 
while bathing in the Neva. 

Bern'storff, the name of a German noble 
family, of whom the most distinguished was 
Johann Hartwig Ernst, count von Bern- 
storff, Danish statesman under Frederick 
V. and Christian VII., born in Hanover 
1712. He was the most influential member 
of the government, which distinguished it¬ 
self under his direction by a wise neutrality 
during tb,e Seven Years’ war, &c., by mea- 



BEROE 


BERSERKER. 


eures for improving the condition of the 
Danish peasantry; by promoting science, 
and sending to Asia the expedition which 
Niebuhr accompanied. By his efforts Den¬ 
mark acquired Holstein. He died 1772. 

Ber'oe, a genus of small marine, coelen- 
terate animals,order Ctenophora, transparent 
and gelatinous, globular in form, floating in 
the sea, and shining at night with phos¬ 
phoric light. 

Bero'sus, a priest of the temple of Belus 
at Babylon early in the third century B.C., 
who wrote in Greek a history of the Baby¬ 
lonian Chaldeans founded on the ancient 
archives of the temple of Belus. It is known 
only by the quotations from it in Apollodo- 
rus, Eusebius, Josephus, &c. 

Berquin (ber-kan), Arnaud, French 
writer, born in 1749, first attracted notice 
by his Idylles, and by several translations 
entitled Tableaux Anglais; but was best 
known by his Ami des Enfans, a series of 
narratives for children, for which, though 
plagiarized from Weisse’s Kinderfreund, he 
received the prize of the French Academy 
in 1789. He was for some time the editor 
of the Moniteur. Died 1791. 

Berri, or Berry, formerly a province and 
dukedom, with Bourges as capital, almost in 
the centre of France. It is now mainly com¬ 
prised in the departments Indre and Cher. 

Berri, or Berry, Charles Ferdinand, 
Duke of, second son of the Count d’Artois 
(afterwards Charles X.), born at Versailles 
Jan. 24, 1778. In 1792 he fled with his 
father to Turin and served under him and 
Conde on the Rhine. In 1801 he came to 
Britain, where he lived alternately in 
London and Scotland, occupied with plans 
for the restoration of the Bourbons. In 
1814 he landed at Cherbourg, and passed 
on to Paris, gaining many adherents to the 
royal cause; but they melted away when 
Napoleon landed from Elba, and the count 
was compelled to retire with the household 
troops to Ghent and Alost. After the 
battle of Waterloo he returned to Paris, and 
in 1816 married. He was assassinated by 
Louvel, a political fanatic, on Feb. 14, 1820. 
The duke had by his wife, Carolina Ferdi- 
nanda Louisa, eldest daughter of Francis, 
afterwards king of the Two Sicilies, a 
daughter, Louise Marie Th6rfese, afterwards 
Duchess of Parma, and a posthumous son 
subsequently known as Comte de Chambord. 

Berry, a succulent fruit, in which the 
seeds are immersed in a pulpy mass inclosed 
by ft thin skin. The name is usually given 


to fruits in which the calyx is adherent to 
the ovary and the placentas are parietal, 
the seeds finally separating from the pla¬ 
centa and lying loose in the pulp. The 
term, however, is frequently used to include 
fruits in which the ovary is free and the pla¬ 
centas central, as the grape. Popularly it 
is applied to fruits like the strawberry, bear¬ 
ing external seeds on a pulpy receptacle, but 
not strictly berries. 

Berryer (ber-ya), Antoine Pierre, a 
French advocate and statesman, born in 
Paris 1790. In 1814 he proclaimed at 
Rennes the deposition of Napoleon, and 
remained till his death an avowed Legiti¬ 
mist. He assisted his father in the defence 
of Ney, secured the acquittal of General 
Cambronne, and defended Lamennais from 
a charge of atheism. His eloquence was 
compared with that of Mirabeau, and after 
the dethronement of Charles X. (1830) he 
remained in the Chamber as the sole Legiti¬ 
mist orator. His political services won for 
him a public subscription of 400,000 francs 
in 1836 to meet his pecuniary difficulties. 
In 1840 he was one of the counsel for the 
defence of Louis Napoleon after the Bou¬ 
logne fiasco. In 1843 he did homage to the 
Comte de Chambord in London, adhering 
to him through the revolution of 1848, and 
voting for the deposition of the prince- 
president the morning after the coup d'etat. 
He gained additional reputation in 1858 
by his defence of Montalembert, and was 
counsel for the Patterson-Bonapartes in the 
suit for the recognition of the Baltimore 
marriage. In 1863 he was re-elected to the 
Chamber with Thiers, and in 1864 received 
a flattering reception in England. He died 
in 1868. 

Bersaglieri (ber-sal-ya're), a corps of 
Italian sharpshooters organized early in the 
reign of Victor Emmanuel by General Ales¬ 
sandro della Marmora. Two battalions took 
part in the Crimean war and distinguished 
themselves at the battle of Tchernaya (Aug. 
16, 1855). 

Berserk'er, a Scandinavian name for war¬ 
riors who fought in a sort of frenzy or reck¬ 
less fury, dashing themselves on the enemy 
in the most regardless manner. The first 
Berserker was said to have been Arngrim, 
the grandson of the eight-handed Starkader 
and the fair Alfhilde. He wore no mail in 
battle, and had twelve sons, also called Ber¬ 
serker. The name is probably derived from 
the bear-sark or bear-skin shirt worn by 
early warriors. 



BERTH IER-BERWICK. 


Berthier (bert-ya), Alexander, prince 
of Neufchatel and Wagram, marshal, vice¬ 
constable of France, &c.; born 1753; son of 
a distinguished officer. While yet young he 
served in America with Lafayette, and after 
some years’ service in France he joined the 
army of Italy in 1795 as general of division 
and chief of the general staff, receiving in 
1798 the chief command. In this capacity 
he entered Rome, abducted Pius VI., abol¬ 
ished the papal government, and established 
a consular one. He followed Bonaparte to 
Egypt as chief of the general staff; was 
appointed by him minister of war after the 
18th Brumaire; accompanied him to Italy 
in 1800, and again in 1805, to be present at 
his coronation; and was appointed chief of 
the general staff of the grand army in Ger¬ 
many. In all Napoleon’s expeditions he was 
one of his closest companions, on several occa¬ 
sions rendering valuable services, as at Wag¬ 
ram in 1809, when he gained the title of 
Prince of Wagram. After Napoleon’s abdi¬ 
cation he was taken into the favour and con¬ 
fidence of Louis XVIII., and on Napoleon’s 
return the difficulty of his position unhinged 
his mind, and he put an end to his life by 
throwing himself from a window. He left 
a son, Alexander (born in 1810), one of the 
most zealous adherents of Napoleon III. 

Berthollet (ber-to-la), Claude Louis, 
Count, an eminent French chemist, born 
1748; studied medicine; became connected 
with Lavoisier; was admitted in 1780 mem¬ 
ber of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; 
in 1794 professor in the normal school there. 
He followed Bonaparte to Egypt, and re¬ 
turned with him in 1799. Notwithstanding 
the various honours conferred on him by 
Napoleon he voted in 1814 for his de¬ 
thronement, and was made a peer by Louis 
XVIII. His chief chemical discoveries 
were connected with the analysis of am¬ 
monia, the use of chlorine in bleaching, the 
artificial production of nitre, &c. His most 
important works were his Essai de Statique 
Chimique (1803), and the Methode de No¬ 
menclature Chimique (1787). He died in 
Paris 1822. 

Bertholle'tia, the name given in honour 
of Berthollet to a genus of Myrtacete, of 
which only one species, B. excelsa, is known. 
This tree forms vast forests on the banks of 
the Amazon, Rio Negro, and Orinoco, aver¬ 
aging 100 feet in height, with a stem only 
2 feet in diameter, and destitute of branches 
till near the top. It produces the well- 
Brazil-puts of commerge, which are 


contained in a round and strong seed-vessel, 
to the number of from fifteen to fifty or 
more, and contain a great deal of oil. 

Berwick (ber'ik), or more fully, Berwick- 
ON-Tweed, a seaport town of England, for¬ 
merly a pari. bor. and (with small adjoin¬ 
ing district) a county by itself, but now 
incorporated with Northumberland, and 
giving name to a pari. div. of the county. 
It stands on the north or Scottish side of 
the Tweed, within half a mile of its mouth. 
It is surrounded by walls of earth faced 
with stone, along which is an agreeable 
promenade; the streets are mostly narrow, 
straggling, and irregular. The Tweed is 
crossed by an old bridge of fifteen arches 
and by a fine railway viaduct. Chief in¬ 
dustries : iron-founding, the manufacture 
of engines and boilers, agricultural imple¬ 
ments, feeding-cake, manures, ropes, twine, 
&c.; there is a small shipping trade. In 
the beginning of the twelfth century, dur¬ 
ing the reign of Alexander I., Berwick 
was part of Scotland, and the capital of 
the district called Lothian. In 1216 the 
town and castle were stormed and taken 
by King John; Bruce retook them in 
1318; but, after undergoing various sieges 
and vicissitudes, both were surrendered to 
Edward IV. in 1482, and have ever since 
remained in possession of England. Pop. 
13,378.—The county of Berwick, the most 
eastern border-county of Scotland, is bounded 
by the German Ocean, East Lothian, Rox¬ 
burgh, Peebles, the river Tweed, and the Eng¬ 
lish borders. It is nominally divided into 
the three districts of Lauderdale (the valley 
of the Leader), Lammermoor, and the Merse 
or March (the valley of the Tweed). Total 
area, 297,161 acres, of which two-thirds are 
productive. The principal rivers are the 
Tweed, the Leader, the Eye, the Whiteadder, 
and Blackadder. The minerals are unim¬ 
portant, though freestone and marl are abun¬ 
dant. The county is in high repute for 
agriculture, but has few manufactures, the 
principal being paper. It returns one mem¬ 
ber to Parliament. The county town is 
Greenlaw. Pop. of co., 1891, 32,398. 

Berwick, James Fitz-James, Duke of, 
natural son of the Duke of York (after¬ 
wards James II.) and Arabella Churchill, 
sister of Marlborough; was born at Mou- 
lins, in the Bourbonnais, in 1670, and first 
went by the name of Fitz-James. He re¬ 
ceived his education in France, served in 
Hungary, returned to England at the age 
of seventeen, and received from his fathey 



BERWICK - 

the title of duke. On the lauding of the 
Prince of Orange he went to France with 
his father, and he was wounded at the 
battle of the Boyne, where he nominally 
commanded. He afterwards served under 
Luxembourg in Flanders; in 1702 and 1703 
under the Duke of Burgundy; then under 
Marshal Villeroi. In 1706 he was made 
marshal of France, and sent to Spain, where 
he gained the battle of Almanza, which ren¬ 
dered Philip V. again master of Valencia. In 
1709 he held with honour the command in 
Dauphine, displaying the highest strategic 
skill against the superior forces of the Duke 
of Savoy. He was killed at the siege of 
Philipsburg by a cannon-ball in 1734. 

Berwick, North, a royal (formerly a 
pari.) borough and seaport of Scotland, in 
Haddingtonshire, near the entrance of the 
Firth of Forth. Pop. 1698. 

Ber'yl, a colourless, yellowish, bluish, or 
less brilliant green variety of emerald, the 
prevailing hue being green of various shades, 
but always pale, the want of colour being 
due to absence of chromium, which gives to 
the emerald its deep rich green. Its crystals, 
which are six-sided, are usually longer and 
larger than those of the precious emerald, 
and its structure more distinctly foliated. 
The best beryls are found in Brazil, in 
Siberia, and Ceylon, and in Dauria, on the 
frontiers of China. Beryls are also found 
in many parts of the United States. Some 
of the finer and transparent varieties of it 
are often called aquamarine. 

Beryllium, a metal occurring in beryl 
and other minerals, of a colour similar to 
zinc. Specific gravity 2T; malleable; does 
not oxidize in air or water. Atomic weight 
9‘4; symbol Be. 

Berzelius, John James, Baron, Swedish 
chemist, born in 1779; studied medicine at 
Upsala, and after holding one or two medical 
appointments was appointed lecturer in 
chemistry in the Stockholm military aca¬ 
demy in 1806, and the following year pro¬ 
fessor of pharmacy and medicine. In 1808 
he became a member of the Academy of 
Sciences at Stockholm, in 1810 director, and 
in 1818 its perpetual secretary. In 1818 the 
king made him a noble, and in 1835 a baron. 
He was also a deputy to the National As¬ 
sembly. He discovered selenium and tho¬ 
rium, first exhibited calcium, barium, stron¬ 
tium, tantalum, silicium, and zirconium in 
the elemental state, and investigated whole 
classes of compounds, as those of fluoric 
acid, the metals in the ores of platinum, 


— BESANT. 

tantalum, molybdenum, vanadium, sulphur 
salts, &c., and introduced a new nomencla¬ 
ture and classification of chemical com¬ 
pounds. In short, there was no branch of 
chemistry to which he did not render essen¬ 
tial service. His writings comprise an im¬ 
portant Text-book of Chemistry, View of 
the Composition of Animal Fluids, New 
System of Mineralogy, Essay on the 
Theory of Chemical Proportions, &c. He 
died in 1848. 

Bes, an Egyptian god, represented clad 
in a lion’s skin, with the head and skull of 
the animal concealing his features, and with 
a dwarfish and altogether grotesque appear¬ 
ance. 

Besancon (be-san-son), a town of East¬ 
ern France, capital of the department 
Doubs, is situated on a rocky peninsula 
washed on three sides by the river Doubs, 
and surmounted by a strong citadel. It is 
further strengthened by an outlying system 
of forts on neighbouring eminences. The 
streets are spacious and well laid out, with 
fine cathedral and churches, public buildings 
and promenades. The manufactures com¬ 
prise linen, cotton, woollen, and silk goods, 
ironmongery, &c; but the principal industry 
is watchmaking, which employs about 13,000 
persons. Besan§on is the ancient Vesontio , 
Besontium, or Bisontium described by Caesar. 
In the fifth century it came into possession 
of the Burgundians; in the twelfth passed 
with Franche-Comtt? to the German Empire. 
In 1679 it was ceded to France along with 
the rest of Franche-Comt6, of which it re¬ 
mained the capital till 1793, with a parlia¬ 
ment, &c., of its own. Pop. 56,511. 

Besant', Walter, English novelist, born 
1838, educated in London and at Christ’s 
College, Cambridge, where he graduated 
with mathematical honours. He was for a 
time professor in the Royal College, Mau¬ 
ritius. His first work, Studies in Early 
French Poetry, appeared in 1868, and to the 
field of French literature also belong his 
French Humorists and his Rabelais (for 
the Foreign Classics series). He has long 
been secretary to the Palestine Exploration 
Fund, and has published a History of Jeru¬ 
salem in connection with Prof. Palmer, a 
life of whom he has also written. He is 
best known by his novels, a number of 
which were written in partnership with the 
late Mr. James Rice, including Ready- 
Money Mortiboy; This Son of Vulcan; The 
Case of Mr. Lucraft; The Golden Butter¬ 
fly; The Monks of Thelema; &c, Since 



BESHLIK — beteL-nUT. 


Mr. Rice’s death (1882) he has written All 
Sorts and Conditions of Men; All in a Gar¬ 
den Fair; Dorothy Foster; The World Went 
very Well Then ; &c. 

Besh'lik, a Turkish silver coin, value 5 
piastres, or about 20 cts. 

Besh'met, a common article of food 
among tribes of the mountainous districts 
of Asia Minor, consisting of grapes boiled 
into the consistence of honey. 

Bessara'bia, a Russian province stretch¬ 
ing in a north-westerly direction from the 
Black Sea, between the Pruth and Danube 
and the Dniester. It was conquered by the 
Turks 1474, taken by the Russians 1770, 
ceded to them by peace of Bucharest in 
1812; the s.E. extremity was given to Tur¬ 
key in 1856, but restored to Russia by 
treaty of Berlin, 1878, in exchange for the 
Dobrudsha. In the north the country is 
hilly, but in the south flat and low. It 
is fertile in grain, but is largely used for 
pasturage. Capital, Kishenef. Pop., chiefly 
Walachians, Gypsies, and Tartars, 1,397,842. 

Bessar'ion, Johannes, titular patriarch 
of Constantinople and Greek scholar, born 
in Trebizond 1389 or 1395, died 1472. He 
was made archbishop of Nicsea by John 
Palieologus, whose efforts to unite the Greek 
and Roman churches he seconded in such a 
way as to lose the esteem of his countrymen 
and gain that of Pope Eugenius IV., who 
made him cardinal. He held various im¬ 
portant posts, and was twice nearly elected 
pope. The revival of letters in the fifteenth 
century owed not a little to his influence. 
He left translations of Aristotle and vindi¬ 
cations of Plato, with valuable collections 
of books and MSS. 

Besseges (ba-sazh), a town, France, de¬ 
partment of Gard, with important coal and 
iron mines and blast-furnaces. Pop. 9169. 

Bes'sel, Friedrich Wilhelm, a German 
astronomer, born in 1784; appointed in 1810 
director of the observatory at Konigsberg. 
From 1824 to 1833 he completed a series of 
75,011 observations on the celestial zone 
between 15° N. and 15° S. declination. In 
1840 he called attention to the probable 
existence of a planetary mass beyond Ura¬ 
nus, resulting in the discovery of Neptune. 
He died in 1846. His principal works are 
the Elements of Astronomy (1818), and its 
continuations, the Tabulae Regiomontanae 
(1830) and Astronomical Researches (1841- 
42). His determination of the parallax of 
the star 61 Cygni was one of his most note¬ 
worthy practical achievements. 

477 


Bessemer, a town of the United States, 
in Alabama, of recent origin, named after 
the inventor, situated in the centre of coal 
and iron fields, and with numerous blast¬ 
furnaces. 

Bes'semer, Sir Henry, English engineer 
and inventor, was born in Hertfordshire in 
1813. He is celebrated for his new and 
cheap process of rapidly making steel from 
pfe-iron by blowing a blast of air through 
it when in a state of fusion, so as to clear 
it of all carbon, and then adding just the 
requisite quantity of carbon to produce steel 
—a process which has introduced a revolu¬ 
tion in the steel-making trade, cheap steel 
being now made in vast quantities and used 
for many purposes in which its price for¬ 
merly prohibited its application. He was 
knighted in 1879. 

Bestiaires (bes'ti-arz), or Bestiaries, a 
class of books very popular in the eleventh, 
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, describing 
all sorts of animals, real and fabled, and 
forming a species of mediaeval encyclopedia 
of zoology. The animals were treated as 
symbolic, and their peculiarities or supposed 
peculiarities spiritually applied. The vol¬ 
umes are to be found both in Latin and in 
the vernacular, in prose and in verse. 

Beta. See Beet. 

Betanzos (be-tan'thos), a town of Nor¬ 
thern Spain, prov. Coruna. Pop. 8122. 

Eet'el, Bet'le, a species of pepper, Cha~ 
vica Betel , a creeping or climbing plant, 
native of the East Indies, nat. order Piper- 
aceae. The leaves are employed to inclose 
a piece of 
the areca 
or betel-nut 
and a little 
lime into a 
pellet,which 
is extensive¬ 
ly chewed 
in the East. 

The pellet 
is hot and 
acrid, but 
has aromatic 
and astrin¬ 
gent pro¬ 
perties. It 
tinges the 
saliva, gums, 
and lips a brick-red, and blackens the teeth. 
See next art. 

Betel-nut, the kernel of the fruit of the 
beautiful palm Areca Catechu, found in 



Leaf, flowers, and nut of Betel Palm 
(Areca Catechu). 






BETHANY - 

India and the East, and named from being 
chewed along with betel-leaf. (See preced¬ 
ing art.) When ripe it is of the size of a 
cherry, conical in shape, brown externally, 
and mottled internally like a nutmeg. Cey¬ 
lon alone exports 70,000 cwt. annually. 

Beth'any, now called El'Azariyeh or 
Lazarieh , a village of Palestine at the base 
of Mount Olivet, about 2 miles E. of Jeru¬ 
salem, formerly the home of Martha, Mary, 
and Lazarus, and the place near which the 
ascension of our Lord took place. 

Bethes'da (‘house of mercy’), a pool in 
Jerusalem near St. Stephen’s Gate and the 
Temple of Omar. It is 460 feet long, 130 
broad, and 75 deep, and now known as Bir- 
ket Israel (see John v. 2-9). 

BethTehem, the birthplace of Christ; a 
village, formerly a town, in Palestine, a few 
miles south from Jerusalem. Pop. about 
3000, chiefly Christians, who make rosaries, 
crucifixes, &c., for pilgrims. There are 
three convents for Catholics, Greeks, and 
Armenians. A richly adorned grotto lighted 
with silver and crystal lamps, under the 
choir of the fine church built by Justinian, 
is shown as the actual spot where Jesus 
was born. 

Bethlehem, a town of the United States, 
founded by Moravians in 1741 in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, on the Lehigh, across which is a 
bridge connecting it with S. Bethlehem, 
the seat of Lehigh University. Pop. in 
1890, 6762. 

Bethlehemites, a name applied (1) to the 
followers of Jerome Huss, from Bethlehem 
Church, Prague, where he preached; (2) to 
an order of monks, established according to 
Matthew Paris in 1257, with a monastery 
at Cambridge; (3) to an order founded in 
Guatemala about 1655 by Fray Pedro, a 
Franciscan tertiary, a native of Teneriffe. 
It spread to Mexico, Peru, and the Canary 
- Islands. An order of nuns founded in 1667 
bore the same name. 

Bethlem-Gabor, that is, Gabriel-Bethlem, 
born of Protestant Magyar family in 1580; 
fought under Gabriel Bathori, and then 
joined the Turks, by whose aid he made 
himself Prince of Transylvania in 1613. 
In 1619 he assisted the Bohemians against 
Austria, and, marching into Hungary, was 
elected king by the nobles (1620). This 
title he surrendered in return for the cession 
to him by the Emperor Frederick II. of 
seven Hungarian counties and two Silesian 
principalities. After a brilliant reign he 
died in 1629 without heir. 


- BETTING. 

Bethnal Green, an eastern suburban dis¬ 
trict and parish of Loudon, Middlesex, now 
forming a pari. bor. having two divisions 
with two members. Pop. 1891, 129,134. 

Bethune (ba-tiin), an old town of France, 
dep. of Pas de Calais, with various indus*- 
tries and a considerable trade. The family 
of Bethune (extinct since 1807) is cele¬ 
brated, and a branch of it, to which Car¬ 
dinal Beaton belonged, was established in 
Scotland about the end of the twelfth cen¬ 
tury. Pop. 8178. 

Bet'juans. See Bcchuanas. 

Bet'lis, or Bitlis, a town, Turkish Ar¬ 
menia, not far from Lake Van, one of the 
most ancient cities of Kurdistan. Pop. 
(Turks, Kurds, and Armenians), from 5000 
to 10,000. 

Beton, a concrete composed of lime and 
gravel, used to form artificial foundations 
on insecure sites, 

Bet'ony, the popular name of Stachys 
Betonica (or Betonica officinalis), a labiate 
plant with purple flowers which grows 
in woods, was formerly much employed in 
medicine, and sometimes used to dye wool of 
a fine dark-yellow colour.— Water betony , 
Scrophularia aquatica, is named from the 
resemblance of its leaf to that of betony. 

Betroth'ment, a mutual promise or con¬ 
tract between two parties, by which they 
bind themselves to marry. It was anciently 
attended with the interchange of rings, 
joining hands, and kissing in presence of 
witnesses; and formal betrothment is still 
the custom on the continent of Europe, be¬ 
ing either solemn (made in the face of the 
church) or private (made before witnesses 
out of the church). As betrothments are 
contracts, they are valid only between per¬ 
sons whose capacity is recognized by law, 
and the breach of them may be the subject 
of litigation. 

Bet'terton, Thomas, English actor in the 
reign of Charles II., born in 1635; excelled 
in Shakspere’s characters of Hamlet, Oth¬ 
ello, Brutus, and Hotspur, and was the 
means of introducing shifting scenes instead 
of tapestry upon the English stage. He died 
in 1710, and was buried in Westminster 
Abbey. He wrote the Woman made a 
Justice, a comedy; the Amorous Widow, or 
the Wanton Wife; Diocletian, a dramatic 
opera, &c. Mrs. Sanderson, whom he mar¬ 
ried in 1670, was also an actress of repute. 

Betting, the staking or pledging of money 
or property upon a contingency or issue. 
The processes of betting may be best illus- 

478 



BETTING — 

trated in connection with horse-racing, which 
furnishes the members of the betting frater¬ 
nity with their best markets. Bettors are 
divided into two classes—the backers of 
horses, and the book-makers, or professional 
bettors, who form the betting ring, and 
make a living by betting against horses 
according to a methodical plan. By the 
method adopted by the professional bettor 
the element of chance is as far as possible 
removed from his transactions, so that he 
can calculate, with a reasonable prospect of 
having his calculations verified, on making 
more or less profit as the result of a season’s 
engagements. Instead of backing any par¬ 
ticular horse, the professional bettor lays 
the same sum against every horse that takes 
the field, or a certain number of them, and 
in doing so he has usually to give odds, 
which are greater or less according to the 
estimate formed of the chance of success 
which each of the horses has on which the 
odds are given. In this way, while in the 
event of the race being won (as is usually 
the case) by any of the horses entered in 
the betting-book of a professional bettor, 
the latter has always a certain fixed sum 
(say $5000) to pay, he receives from the 
backers of the losers sums which vary in 
proportion to the odds given. Thus, if a 
book-maker is making a $5000 book, and 
the odds against some horse is 4 to 1, he will, 
if that horse wins, have to pay $5000, while, 
if it loses, he will receive $1250. It usually 
depends upon which horse it is that wins a 
race whether the book-maker gains or loses. 
If the first favourite wins it is evidently the 
worst thing that could happen for the book¬ 
maker, for as he is bound to receive the sum 
of the amounts to which all the horses ex¬ 
cept one have been backed, the largest de¬ 
duction must be made from his total receipts 
on account of the first favourite. Very 
frequently the receipts of the book-maker 
are augmented by sums paid on account of 
horses which have been backed and never 
run at all. Sometimes, although not often, 
the odds are given upon and not against a 
particular horse. Books may also be made 
up on the principle of betting against any 
particular horse getting a place among the 
first three. The odds in this case are usually 
one-fourth of the odds given against the 
same horse winning. Another mode of 
betting is that called a sweepstake, in which 
a number of persons join in contributing a 
certain stake, after which each of those 
taking part in the sweepstake has a horse 

479 


BEVELAND. 

assigned to him (usually by lot), which he 
backs, and the backer of the winning horse 
gains the whole stakes. If there are more 
persons taking part in the sweepstake than 
there are horses running some of them must 
draw blanks, in which case of course their 
stakes are at once lost. In the years im¬ 
mediately preceding 1850 the practice of 
betting had increased to such an extent in 
England that an act for the suppression of 
betting-houses (16 and 17 Viet. c. 119, 1853) 
was passed, followed by acts condemning 
persons unlawfully playing or betting in the 
streets or public places as rogues and vaga- 
bands. A later act (37 Viet. c. 15, 1874) 
imposed penalties on persons advertising or 
sending letters, circulars, telegrams, &c., as 
to betting. Similar legal restrictions are 
nominally operative in France and America. 

Bettong. See Kangaroo Rat. 

Bet'ula, the birch genus, type of the 
order Betulaceae, which belongs to the 
amentaceous plants, and consists of trees 
or shrubs with alternate, simple, stipuled 
leaves, flowers in catkins, scales in place of 
perianth; genera Betula and Alnus (alder). 

Betwa, a river of India rising in the 
Vindhya range in Bhopal, and after a north¬ 
easterly course of 360 miles joining the 
Jumna at Hamirpur. 

Beust (boist), Friedrich Ferdinand, 
Count von, Saxon and Austrian statesman, 
was born at Dresden in 1809, died in 1886. 
He adopted the career of diplomacy, and as 
member of embassies or ambassador for 
Saxony resided at Berlin, Paris, Munich, 
and London. He was successively minister 
of foreign affairs and of the interior for 
Saxony. At the London conference regar¬ 
ding the Schleswig-Holstein-difficulty he 
represented the German Bund. He lent 
his influence on the side of Austria against 
Prussia before the war of 1866, after which, 
finding his position in Saxony difficult, he 
entered the service of Austria as minister 
of foreign affairs, became president of the 
ministry, imperial chancellor, and in 1868 
was created count. In 1871-78 he was 
ambassador in London, in 1878-82 in Paris. 

Beuthen (boi'tn), a town in Prussian 
Silesia near the s.E. frontier, in the govern¬ 
ment of Oppeln; the centre of a mining 
district. Manufactures of cloth and linens. 
Pop. 22,811. 

Beveland (ba've-lant), North and South, 
two islands in the estuary of the Scheldt, 
Netherlands, province of Zeeland; area of 
North Beveland, 15,200 acre*, pop. 6000; 



BEVERIDGE 

area of South Beveland, 84,000 acres, pop. 
23,000; chief town, Goes, 5000. It is very 
fertile, and has manufactures of salt, leather, 
beer, &c. 

Bev'eridge, William, an English divine, 
born in 1637, studied at Cambridge, and in 
his twenty-first year published a work on 
the study of Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Ara¬ 
bic, and Samaritan, with a Syriac grammar. 
In 1660 he became vicar of Ealing, and was, 
after various ecclesiastical preferments, ap¬ 
pointed Bishop of St. Asaph in 1704. He 
died at Westminster in 1708. His works 
include an Introduction to Chronology, 
1669; his Synodicon, containing the Apos¬ 
tolic Canons, &c., 1672; and minor devo¬ 
tional treatises on the Christian life, public 
prayer, &c. 

BeVerley, town of England, e. riding of 
Yorkshire, 10 miles N.N.w. of Hull, and 1 
from the river Hull, with which it has 
canal connection; has a fine Gothic minster, 
completed in the reign of Henry III., and 
in some regards unsurpassed. Pop. 12,539. 

Beverly, Mass., about 18 miles northeast 
of Boston; a fine harbor, various manu¬ 
factures. Pop. 1890, 10,821. 

Bev'erley, John of, an English prelate and 
saint, born about the middle of the seventh 
century at Harpham, Yorkshire; appointed 
abbot of St. Hilda; afterwards Bishop of 
Hexham in 685; and two years later Arch¬ 
bishop of York. He founded a college for 
secular priests at Beverley, where he retired 
in 717, and died in 721. Bede, who was 
his pupil, believed that he could work mir¬ 
acles, a power attributed to his remains for 
some centuries. 

Bewdley (‘Beaulieu’), a town, England, 
Worcestershire, on the right bank of the 
Severn. Manufactures—combs, ropes, lea 
ther, and brasswork; some malting is also 
carried on. It now gives name to a pari, 
div. of the county. Pop. 1891, 2876. 

Bewick (bu'ik), Thomas, a celebrated 
English wood engraver, born in Northum¬ 
berland in 1753. He was apprenticed to 
Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle, and exe¬ 
cuted the woodcuts for Hutton’s Mensura¬ 
tion so admirably that his master advised 
him to turn his attention to wood-engraving. 
With this view he proceeded to London, and 
in 1775 received the Society of Arts prize for 
the best wood-engraving. Returning in a 
short time to Newcastle he entered into part¬ 
nership with Beilby, and became known as 
a skilled wood-engraver and designer by his 
illustrations to Gay’s Fables, iEsop’s Fables, 


— BEY ROUT. 

&c. He quite established his fame by the 
issue in 1790 of his History of Quadrupeds 
(text compiled by Beilby), the illustrations 
of which were superior to anything hitherto 
produced in the art of wood-engraving. In 
1797 appeared the first, and in 1804 the 
second volume **f his British Birds, gener¬ 
ally regarded as the finest of his works 
(text partly by Bewick). Enlarged and im¬ 
proved editions of both books soon followed. 
Among his other works may be cited the 
engravings for Goldsmith’s Traveller and 
Deserted Village, Parnell’s Hermit, and 
Somerville’s Chase. He died in 1828. His 
younger brother John, who gave promise 
of attaining equal eminence, died in 1795, 
aged thirty-five. 

Bex (ba), a village of Switzerland, canton 
Yaud, with salt works and warm sulphur 
baths now much frequented. Pop. 4000. 

Bey. See Beg. 

Beyle (bal), Marie-Henri, a French au¬ 
thor widely known by his pseudonym de 
Stendhal; born at Grenoble 1783; held civil 
and military appointments under the empire; 
took part in the Russian campaign of 1812, 
thence until 1821 lived at Milan, chiefly 
occupied with works on music and painting. 
After nine years’ residence at Paris he be¬ 
came in 1830 consul at Trieste, and in 1833 
at Civita Vecchia. In 1841 he returned to 
Paris, and died in 1842. The distinguishing 
feature of his works was the application of 
acutely analytic faculties to sentiment in all 
its varieties, his best books being the De 
1’Amour, 1822; Le Rouge et le Noir, 1831; 
and La Chartreuse de Parme, 1839. 

Beyrout (bi-rot'), or Beirut (ancient 
Berytus ), the chief seaport of Syria, pasha- 
lic of Acre, 60 miles N.w. of Damascus; 
pop. 70,000, mostly Christians. It stands 
on a tongue of land projecting into an open 
bay and backed by the Lebanon range, and 
has rapidly increased since 1835, mainly 
owing to the extension of the silk trade, of 
which it is the centre. Its other chief ex¬ 
ports are olive-oil, cereals, sesame, tobacco, 
and wool; manufactures are silk and cotton. 
The old town has narrow, dirty streets, 
very different from the new with its modern 
houses, hotels, churches, colleges, and schools, 
gardens and carriage drives. Gas has re¬ 
cently been introduced. In ancient times 
Beyrout was a large and important Phoeni¬ 
cian city. The Byzantine emperor Theo¬ 
dosius II. raised it to the rank of a metro¬ 
polis, and it again rose to importance dur¬ 
ing the Crusades. In later times it was 

48U 



BEZA — 

long in the possession of the Druses. It was 
bombarded and taken by the British in 1840. 

Be'za (properly, de Beze), Theodore, next 
to Calvin the most distinguished man in the 
early reformed church of Geneva; born of a 
noble family at Vezelay, Burgundy, 1519; 
educated in Orleans under Melchior Vol¬ 
in ar, a German scholar devoted to the Refor¬ 
mation; in 1539 became a licentiate of law, 
and went to reside at Paris. His habits at 
this time were dissipated, and his Poemata 
Juvenilia, Latin verses of a more than Ovi¬ 
dian freedom, were afterwards a frequent 
ground of attack upon him. The reforming 
influence of a severe illness led in 1548 to 
his retirement to Geneva and his marriage 
with his mistress. In 1549 he became pro¬ 
fessor of Greek at Lausanne, occupying him¬ 
self with the completion of Marot’s trans¬ 
lation of the Psalms and the study of the 
New Testament, and corresponding fre¬ 
quently with Calvin. In 1558 he was sent 
by the Swiss Calvinists on an embassy to 
obtain the intercession of the Protestant 
princes of Germany for the release of Hugue¬ 
nots imprisoned in Paris. In the following 
year he went to Geneva as a preacher, and 
soon after became a professor of theology, 
and the most active assistant of Calvin. He 
also rendered admirable service to the cause 
of the reformers at the court of the Kins: of 
Navarre and in attendance upon Conde and 
Coligny. At Calvin’s death in 1564 the 
administration of the Genevese Church fell 
entirely to his care. He presided in the 
synods of the French Calvinists at La Ro¬ 
chelle (1571) and at Nismes (1572); was 
sent by Cond6 (1574) to the court of the 
elector palatine; and at the religious confer¬ 
ence at Montpellier (1586) opposed James 
Andreas and the theologians of Wiirtemberg. 
At the age of sixty-nine he married his 
second wife (1588),and in 1597 wrote a lively 
poetical refutation of the rumour that he 
had recanted and was dead. In 1600 he 
resigned his official functions, and he died 
in retirement in 1605. Among his many 
works, his History of Calvinism in France 
from 1521 to 1563, and Theological Trea¬ 
tises, are still esteemed; but he is most fa¬ 
mous for his Latin translation of the New 
Testament. 

Bez'ant, a Byzantine gold ducat, a round, 
flat piece of gold, without impression, sup¬ 
posed to have been the current coin of 
Byzantium. They are frequently employed 
as a heraldic charge, a custom supposed to 
have been introduced by the Crusaders. 

VOL I, 481 


BEZOAR. 

Beziers (ba-zyar; anc. Beterrce), a town 
in Southern France, dep. H^rault, beauti¬ 
fully situated on a height and surrounded 
by old walls, its chief edifices being the 
cathedral, a Gothic structure crowning the 



The Cathedral of Beziers. 


height on which the town stands, and the 
old Episcopal palace, now used for public 
offices; manufactures: woollens, hosiery, 
liqueurs, chemicals, &c., with a good trade 
in spirits, wool, grain, oil, verdigris, and 
fruits. In 1209 Beziers was the scene of a 
horrible massacre of the Albigenses. Pop. 
42,785. 

Bezique (be-zek'), a simple game of cards 
most commonly played by two persons with 
two packs. It was a favourite game at the 
French court in the eighteenth centur} 7 , and 
was some time ago revived in England. 

Be'zoar, a concretion or calculus, of a 
roundish or ovate form, met with in the 
stomach or intestines of certain animals, 
especially ruminants. Nine varieties of be- 
zoars have been enumerated, broadly divis¬ 
ible into those which consist mainly of 
mineral and those which consist of organic 
matter. The true oriental bezoars, obtained 
from the gazelle, belong to the second class. 
They are formed by accretion round some 

31 

































BHAGALPUR 

foreign substance, a bit of wood, straw, 
hair, &c., and were formerly regarded as 
efficacious in preventing infection and the 
effects of poison. 

Bhagalpur (bha-gal-por'), a city in Ben¬ 
gal, capital of a district and division of the 
same name, on the right bank of the Gan¬ 
ges, here seven miles wide. There are sev¬ 
eral indigo works in the neighbourhood. 
Pop. 68,238.—The division of Bhagalpur 
has an area of 20,492 sq. miles, and a pop. 
(chiefly Hindus and Mohammedans) of 
8,063,160.—The district has an area of 
4268 square miles; pop. 1,966,158. 

Bhamo, a town of Burmah on the Upper 
Irrawaddy, about 40 miles from the Chinese 
frontier. It is the starting-point of cara¬ 
vans to Yunnan, and is in position to become 
one of the great emporiums of the East in 
event of a regular overland trade beingestab- 
lished between India and West China. 

Bhandara (bhan-da ra), a town of India, 
Central Provinces, with manufactures of 
hardware and cottons. Pop. 11,150. 

Bhang. See Hashish. 

Bhartpur'. See Bhurtpore. 

Bhar'trihari, Indian poet, reputed author 
of a book of apophthegms, according to legend 
a dissolute brother of King Vikramaditya 
(first century B.C.), who became a hermit 
and ascetic. The collection of 300 apoph¬ 
thegms bearing his name is, however, pro¬ 
bably an anthology. 200 of them were 
translated into English and published at 
N lira berg by Abraham Roger as early as 
1653, the first Indian writings known in 
Europe. 

Bhatgaon (bhat-ga'on), a town of Nepal, 
about 8 miles from Khatmandu. Pop. 
30,000. 

Bheels, or Brils, a Dravidic race in¬ 
habiting the Yindhya, Satpura, and Sat- 
mala Hills, a relic of the Indian aborigines 
driven from the plains by the Aryan Raj¬ 
puts. They appear to have been orderly 
and industrious under the Delhi emperors; 
but on the transfer of the power in the 
eighteenth century from the Moguls to the 
Marathas they asserted their independence, 
and being treated as outlaws took to the hills. 
Various attempts to subdue them were made 
by the Gaekwar and by the British in 1818 
without success. A body of them was, how¬ 
ever, subsequently reclaimed, and a Bheel 
corps formed, which stormed the retreats of 
the rest of the race and reduced them to 
comparative order. The hill Bheels wear 
little clothing, and live precariously on grain, 


-BHUTAN. 

wild roots and fruits, vermin, &c., but the 
lowland Bheels are in many respects Hindu- 
ized. Their total numbers are about 750,000. 

Bhel. See Bel. 

Bhilsa, or Bilsa, a town of India, in 
Gwalior State, on a trap-rock, right bank of 
the Betwa. It has a fort and well-built 
suburb, but is chiefly interesting on account 
of the Buddhist topes in the neighbourhood, 
those at Sanchi (4^ miles s.w.) being espe¬ 
cially noteworthy. Pop. 7070. 

Bholan' Pass. See Bolan Pass. 

Bhooj. See Bhuj. 

Bhopal (bho-pal'), a ‘native state of Cen¬ 
tral India under British protection, on the 
Nerbudda, in Malwah. Area, 6874 sq. miles. 
The country is full of jungles, and is tra¬ 
versed by a part of the Yindhya Mts. The 
soil is fertile, yielding wheat, maize, millet, 
pease, and the other vegetable productions 
of Central India. Chief exports: sugar, 
tobacco, ginger, and cotton. The district is 
well watered by the Nerbudda, Betwa, and 
minor streams. Pop. 954,901.—The capi¬ 
tal of above state, also called Bhopal, is on 
the boundary between Malwah and Gund- 
wana. Pop. 55,402. Fine artificial lakes 
east and west of the town. 

Bhuj (bhoj), chief town of Cutch in India, 
Bombay presidency, at the base of a fortified 
hill, with military cantonments, high school 
and school of art, mausoleums of the Raos 
or chiefs of Cutch, &c. Pop. 22,308. 

Bhurtpore', or Bhartpur', a native 
state, India, in Rajputana, bounded E. by 
Agra, 9. and w. by the Rajput States. 
Area, 1974 sq. miles. The surface is gener¬ 
ally low, and the state is scantily supplied 
with water; soil generally light and sandy; 
chief productions: corn, cotton, and sugar. 
The country is also known as Brij, and is 
the only Jat state of any size in India. 
Under British protection since 1826. Pop. 
645,540.—The capital, which has the same 
name, is a fortified place, and was formerly 
of great strength, Lord Lake being com¬ 
pelled to raise the siege in 1805 after losing 
3100 men. It was taken by Lord Comber- 
mere in 1827. The rajah’s palace is a large 
building of red and yellow freestone pre¬ 
senting a picturesque appearance. Pop. 
66,163. 

Bhutan (bhu-tan'), an independent state 
in the Eastern Himalayas, with an area of 
about 10,000 sq. miles, lying between Thibet 
on the N. and Assam and the Jalpaiguri Dis¬ 
trict on the s., and consisting of rugged and 
lofty mountains, abounding in sublime and 

482 



- BIAFRA-BIB. 


picturesque scenery. Pop. 20,000 or 30,000. 
The Bhutanese are a backward race, gov¬ 
erned by a Dharrn Rajah , regarded as an 
incarnation of deity, and by a Deb Rajah , 
with a council of eight. They are nominally 
Buddhists. After various aggressive incur¬ 
sions and the capture and ill-treatment of 
Mr. Ashley Eden, the British envoy, in 1863, 
they were compelled to cede to the British 
considerable portions of territory, in return 
for a yearly allowance of £2500. 

Biaf'ra, Bight of, an African bay run¬ 


ning in from the Gulf of Guinea, having the 
Cameroon Mountains at its inner angle, 
and containing the island of Fernando 
Po. 

Bial'ystok, or Bjelostok, town, Russian 
Poland, province of Grodno; well built, with 
a palace formerly belonging to the Counts 
Braniski, and known as the ‘Polish Ver¬ 
sailles.’ Pop. 39,994. 

Bia'na, a town of India, Bhurtpore, an 
old place with many temples, venerated by 
Mahommedans. Poo. 8758. 



The Rajah’s Palace, Bhurtpore. 


Biancavil'la, a town of Sicily on the 
southern side of Etna. Pop. 13,021. 

Bianchini (-ke'ne), Francesco, Italian 
historian and astronomer, born 1662. Pope 
Alexander VIII. bestowed on him a rich 
benefice, with the appointment of tutor and 
librarian to his nephew Cardinal Pietro 
Ottoboni; and Clement XI. appointed him 
secretary to the commission for the correction 
of the calendar. He spent eight years in the 
endeavour to draw a meridian across Italy 
like that drawn by Cassini through France; 
left a portion of a Universal History, and 
works on the planet Venus, on the Sepulchre 
of Augustus, &c. Died 1729. 

Biard (be-iir), Auguste Francois, a 
French genre painter, born in 1798, died in 
1882. He travelled extensively, visiting 
Spain, Greece, Syria, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, 
&c. Among his best-known pictures have 
been the Babes in the Wood (1828); the 
Beggar’s Family (1836); the Combat with 
Polar Bears (1839); and the Strolling 
Players, now in the Luxembourg. A strong 

483 


element of caricature runs through most of 
his works. 

Biar'ritz, a small seaport, France, Basses- 
Pyr^n^es, near Bayonne. It became a 
fashionable watering-place during the reign 
of Napoleon III., who had an autumn 
residence there. Pop. 8527. 

Bi' as, one of the seven sages of Greece, 
born at Priene, in Ionia; flourished about 
570 B.c, He appears to have been in repute 
as a political and legal adviser, and many 
sayings of practical wisdom attributed to 
him are preserved by Diogenes Laertius. 

Bias (bi-as'), one of the five large rivers of 
the Punjab, India, rising in the Himalayas 
(13,326 ft.), and flowing first in a westerly 
and then in a southerly direction until it 
unites with the Sutlej after a course of 300 
miles. 

Bib, a fish of the cod family (Morrhua 
lusca), found in the British seas, about a 
foot long, the body very deep, esteemed as 
excellent eating. It is called also 'pout or 
whiting pout, 































BIBERACH 


BIBLE. 


Biberach (bS'be-raTi.), a town of Germany, 
Wtirtemberg, on the Riss, formerly a free 
imperial city. The French, under Moreau, 
defeated the Austrians near Biberach in 1796. 
Pop. 7799. 

Bible (Greek biblia, books, from biblos, 
the inner bark of the papyrus, on which the 
ancients wrote), the collection of the Sacred 
Writings or Holy Scriptures of the Chris¬ 
tians. Its two main divisions, one received 
by both Jews and Christians, the other by 
Christians only, are improperly termed 
Testaments, owing to the confusion of two 
meanings of the Greek word dicitheke, which 
was applied indifferently to a covenant and 
to a last will or testament. The Jewish 
religion being represented as a compact 
between God and the Jews, the Christian 
religion was regarded as a new compact be¬ 
tween God and the human race; and the 
Bible is, therefore, properly divisible into the 
Writings of the Old and New Covenants. 
The books of the Old Testament received 
by the Jews were divided by them into 
three classes: 1. The Law, contained in the 
Pentateuch or five books of Moses. 2. The 
Prophets, comprising Joshua, Judges, I. and 
II. Samuel, I. and II. Kings, Isaiah, Jere¬ 
miah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor pro¬ 
phets. 3. The Ketubim, or Hagiographa 
(holy writings), containing the Psalms, the 
Proverbs, Job, in one division; Ruth, La¬ 
mentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, the Song 
of Solomon, in another division; Daniel, 
Ezra, Nehemiah, I. and II. Chronicles, in 
a third. These books are extant in the 
Hebrew language; others, rejected from the 
canon as apocryphal by Protestants, are 
found only in Greek or Latin. 

The books of Moses were deposited, accord¬ 
ing to the Bible,in the tabernacle,near the ark, 
the other sacred writings being similarly pre¬ 
served. They were removed by Solomon 
to the temple, and on the capture of Jeru¬ 
salem by Nebuchadnezzar probably per¬ 
ished. According to Jewish tradition Ezra, 
with the assistance of the great synagogue, 
collected and compared as many copies as 
could be found, and from this collation an 
edition of the whole was prepared, with the 
exception of the writings of Ezra, Malachi, 
and Nehemiah, added subsequently, and cer¬ 
tain obviously later insertions in other books. 
When Judas Maccabseus repaired the temple, 
which had been destroyed by Antiochus 
Epiphanes, he placed in it a correct copy of 
the Hebrew Scriptures, whether the recen¬ 
sion of Ezra or not is not known. This 


copy was carried to Rome by Titus. The 
exact date of the determination of the 
Hebrew canon is uncertain, but no work 
known to be written later than about 100 
years after the captivity was admitted into 
it by the Jews of Palestine. The Hellen¬ 
istic or Alexandrian Jews, however, were 
less strict, and admitted many later writ¬ 
ings, forming what is now known as the 
Apocrypha, in which they were followed by 
the Latin Church. The Protestant churches 
at the Reformation gave in their adherence 
to the restricted Hebrew canon, though the 
Apocrypha was long included in the various 
editions of the Bible. The division into 
chapters and verses, as it now exists, is of 
comparatively modern origin, though divi¬ 
sions of some kind were early introduced. 
Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, in the 
thirteenth century, divided the Latin trans¬ 
lation known as the Vulgate into chapters 
for convenience of reference, and similar 
divisions were made in the Hebrew text by 
Rabbi Mordecai Nathan in the fifteenth 
century. About the middle of the sixteenth 
century the verses in Robert Stephanus’s 
edition of the Vulgate were for the first 
time marked by numbers. 

The earliest and most famous version of 
the Old Testament is the Septuagint, or 
Greek translation, executed by Alexandrian 
Greeks, and completed probably before 130 
B.c., different portions being done at differ¬ 
ent times. This version was adopted by 
the early Christian church and by the Jews 
themselves, and has always held an import¬ 
ant place in regard to the interpretation and 
history of the Bible. The Syriac version, 
the Peshito, made early in the second cen¬ 
tury after Christ, is celebrated for its fidel¬ 
ity. The Coptic version was made from the 
Septuagint in the third or fourth century. 
The Gothic version, by Ulphilas, was made 
from the Septuagint in the fourth century, 
but mere insignificant fragments of it are 
extant. The most important Latin version 
is the Vulgate, executed by Jerome, partly 
on the basis of the original Hebrew, and 
completed in 405 a.d. 

The printed editions of the Hebrew Bible 
are very numerous. The first edition of 
the entire Hebrew Bible was printed at 
Soncino in 1488. The Brescian edition of 
1494 was used by Luther in making his 
German translation. The editions of Athias 
(1661 and 1667) are much esteemed for 
their beauty and correctness. Van der 
Hooght followed the latter. Dr. Kennicott 

484 



BIBLE. 


did more than any one of his predecessors 
to settle the Hebrew text. His Hebrew 
Bible appeared at Oxford in 1776-80, two 
vols. folio. The text is from that of Van 
der Hooght, with which 630 MSS. were 
collated. De Rossi, who published a supple¬ 
ment to Kennicott’s edition (Parma, 1784— 
99, five vols. 4to), collated 958 MSS. The 
German Orientalists, Gesenius, De Wette, 
&c., in recent times, have done very much 
towards correcting the Hebrew text. The 
oldest MS. of the Hebrew Bible belongs to 
1106, and presents what is known as the 
Massoretic text, that is the text provided 
with the vowel points and other markings 
which were inserted by Jewish scholars 
known as the Massoretes. 

The books of the New Testament were 
all written in Greek, unless it be true, as 
some critics suppose, that the Gospel of St. 
Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. 
Most of these writings have always been 
received as canonical; but the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, commonly ascribed to St. Paul, 
that of St. Jude, the second of Peter, the 
second and third of John, and the Apo¬ 
calypse, have been doubted. The three 
oldest MSS. are: (1) the Sinaitic MS., dis¬ 
covered by Tischendorf in a convent on 
Mount Sinai in 1859, assigned to the middle 
of the fourth century; (2) the Vatican MS. 
at Rome, of similar date; (3) the Alexandrine 
MS. in the British Museum, assigned to 
the middle of the fifth century. Each MS. 
contains also the Septuagint Greek of the 
Old Testament in great part. The Vulgate 
of Jerome embraces a Latin translation of 
the New as well as of the Old Testament, 
based on an older Latin version. The divi¬ 
sion of the text of the New Testament into 
chapters and verses was introduced later 
than that of the Old Testament; but it is 
not precisely known when or by whom. The 
Greek text was first printed in the Com- 
plutensian Polyglot, in 1514; in 1516 an 
edition of it was published at Basel by 
Erasmus. Among recent valuable editions 
are those of Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tre- 
gelles, and Westcott and Hort. 

Of translations of the Bible into modern 
languages the English and the German are 
the most celebrated. Considerable portions 
were translated into Anglo-Saxon, includ¬ 
ing the Gospels and the Psalter. Wycliffe’s 
translation of the whole Bible (from the 
Vulgate), begun about 1356, was completed 
shortly before his death, which took place in 
1384. The first printed version of the Bible 

485 


in English was the translation of William 
Tindall or Tyndale, whose New Testament 
was printed in quarto at Cologne in 1525, a 
small octavo edition appearing at the same 
time at Worms. Tonstall, bishop of Lon¬ 
don, caused the first edition to be bought up 
and burned. The Pentateuch was published 
by Tindall in 1530, and he also translated 
some of the prophetical books. Our trans¬ 
lation of the New Testament is much in¬ 
debted to Tindall’s. A translation of the 
entire Bible was published by Miles Cover- 
dale in 1535. It was undertaken at the 
instance of Thomas Cromwell, and being 
made from German and Latin versions was 
inferior to Tindall’s. After the death of 
Tindall John Rogers undertook the comple¬ 
tion of his translation and the preparation 
of a new edition. In this edition the 
latter part of the Old Testament (after 
II. Chronicles) was based on Coverdale’s 
version. A revised edition was published 
in 1539 under the superintendence of Rich¬ 
ard Taverner. In the same year as Taver¬ 
ner’s another edition appeared, printed by 
authority, with a preface by Cranmer, and 
hence called Cranmer’s Bible. This was 
the first Bible printed by authorit}' in Eng¬ 
land, and a royal proclamation in 1540 
ordered it to be placed in every parish 
church. This continued, with various revi¬ 
sions, to be the authorized version till 1568. 
In 1557-60 an edition appeared at Geneva, 
based on Tindall’s—the work of Whittington, 
Coverdale, Goodman, John Knox, and other 
exiles—and commonly called the Geneva or 
Breeches Bible (from ‘breeches’ standing 
instead of ‘aprons’ in Gen. iii. 7). This 
version, for sixty years the most popular 
in England, was allowed to be printed in 
England under a patent of monopoly in 
1561. It was the first printed in Roman 
letters, and was also the first to adopt the 
plan previously adopted in the Hebrew of a 
division into verses. It omitted the Apo¬ 
crypha, left the authorship of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews open, and put words not in 
the original in italics. The Bishops’ Bible, 
published 1568 to 1572, was based on Cran¬ 
mer’s, and revised by Archbishop Parker 
and eight bishops. It succeeded Cranmer’s 
as the authorized version, but did not com¬ 
mend itself to scholars or people. In 1582 
an edition of the New Testament, translated 
from the Latin Vulgate, appeared at Rheims, 
and in 1609-10 the Old Testament was pub¬ 
lished at Douay. This is the version re¬ 
cognized by the R, -Catholic Church. 


BIBLE CHRISTIANS- 

In the reign of James I. a Hebrew 
scholar, Hugh Broughton, insisted on the 
necessity of a new translation, and at the 
Hampton Court Conference (1604) the sug¬ 
gestion was accepted by the king. The 
work was undertaken by forty-seven scho¬ 
lars divided into six companies, two meeting 
at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at 
Cambridge, while a general committee meet¬ 
ing in London revised the portions of the 
translation finished by each. The revision 
was begun in 1607, and occupied three 
years, the completed work being published 
in folio in 1611. By the general accuracy 
of its translation and the purity of its style 
it superseded all other versions. In re¬ 
sponse, however, to a widely-spread desire 
for a translation even yet more free from 
errors, the Convocation of Canterbury in 
1870 appointed a committee to consider the 
question of revising the English version. 
Their report being favourable two com¬ 
panies were formed, one for the Old Testa¬ 
ment and one for the New, consisting partly 
of members of Convocation and partly of 
outside scholars. Two similar companies 
were also organized in America to work 
along with the British scholars. The result 
was that the revised version of the New 
Testament was issued in 1881; that of the 
Old Testament in 1884. The revision has 
been carried out in a spirit of reverence 
towards the older version, and few altera¬ 
tions have been admitted but such as have 
been called for on the score of accuracy, 
clearness, and uniformity—see the revisers’ 
prefaces. 

In Germany some seventeen translations 
of the Bible, partly in the High German 
partly in the Low German dialect, ap¬ 
peared between the invention of printing 
and the Reformation, but they bad all to 
make way for Luther’s great translation — 
the New Testament in 1522, and the whole 
Bible in 1534. 

Bible Christians, a small sect founded 
by a Cornish Methodist preacher called 
O’Bryan, who profess to follow only the 
doctrines of the Bible and reject all human 
authority in religion. Called also Bryanites. 

Bible Communists. See Perfectionists. 

Bible Societies, societies formed for the 
distribution of the Bible or portions of it in 
various languages, either gratuitously or at 
a low rate. A clergyman of Wales, whom 
the want of a Welsh Bible led to London, 
occasioned the establishment of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society, March 7, 1804. 


-BIBLE SOCIETIES. 

A great number of similar institutions were 
soon formed in all parts of Great Britain, 
and afterwards on the Continent of Europe, 
in Asia and in America, and connected with 
the British as a parent or kindred society. 
Since the formation of the British and 
Foreign Bible Society it has circulated over 
340 versions of the whole or parts of the 
Scriptures in 298 different languages. In 
more than thirty instances languages have 
for the first time been reduced to a written 
form in order to translate into them and 
circulate amongst the people the Bibles of 
this society. The total issues now amount 
to about 100,000,000 copies, while about 
70,000,000 additional copies have been dis¬ 
tributed by the kindred societies which have 
sprung out of it. The proceedings of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society gave rise 
to several controversies, one of which related 
to the neglecting to give the Prayer-book 
with the Bible. Another controversy re¬ 
lated to the circulation of the Apocrypha 
along with the canonical books. The Edin¬ 
burgh Bible Society established in 1809, and 
up to 1826 connected with the British and 
Foreign Bible Society, seceded on the occa¬ 
sion of the controversy regarding the cir¬ 
culation of the Apocrypha, and up to 1860 
existed as a separate society. In 1861 this 
society was united with the National, the 
Glasgow, and other Bible societies, into a 
whole called the National Bible Society of 
Scotland, having its headquarters in Edin¬ 
burgh and Glasgow. Its total issue is now 
nearly 6,000,000. The Hibernian Bible So¬ 
ciety, which has its headquarters in Dublin, 
was established in 1806, to encourage a wider 
circulation of the Bible in Ireland. Total 
issue about 5,000,000 copies. In Germany 
the principal Bible society is the Prussian, 
established at Berlin in 1814 and having 
many auxiliaries. France has two principal 
Bible Societies, whose headquarters are at 
Paris, the one instituted in 1818, the other 
in 1833. Switzerland possesses various Bible 
societies, chief among which are those of 
Basel (1804), Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva. 
In the Netherlands there has existed since 
1815 a fraternal union of different sects for 
the distribution of Bibles. The Swedish 
Bible Society was instituted in 1808, and 
the Norwegian Bible Society in 1816. The 
first Russian Society in St. Petersburg 
printed the Bible in thirty-one languages 
and dialects spoken in the Russian domi¬ 
nions, and auxiliary societies were formed 
at Irkutsk, Tobolsk, among the Kirghises, 

486 



BIBLIA BAUPERUM-BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


Georgians, and Cossacks of the Don; but 
they were all suppressed by an imperial 
ukase in 1826. In 1831 a new Bible So¬ 
ciety was instituted at St. Petersburg— 
namely, the Russian Evangelical Bible So¬ 
ciety. Italy, Spain, and Portugal have had 
as yet no Bible societies; but the British 
societies are energetic in providing them 
with Bibles in their own tongues. In the 
United States of America the great Ame¬ 
rican Bible Society, formed in 1816, acts in 
concert with auxiliary societies in all parts 
of the Union. Its total issue since its 
organization has been about 40,000,000. 

Bib'lia Pau'perum (‘Bible of the poor’), 
the name for block-books common in the 
middle ages, and consisting of a number of 
rude pictures of Biblical subjects with short 
explanatory text accompanying each picture. 

Bibliography (Gr. bibiion , a book, and 
grapho, I describe), the knowledge of books, 
in reference to the subjects discussed in 
them, their different degrees of rarity, curio¬ 
sity, reputed and real value, the materials 
of which they are composed, and the rank 
which they ought to hold in the classifica¬ 
tion of a library. The subject is sometimes 
divided into general , national , and special 
bibliography, according as it deals with 
books in general, with those of a particular 
country, or with those on special subjects 
or having a special character (as early 
printed books, anonymous books). A sub¬ 
division of each of these might be made into 
material and literary , according as books 
were viewed in regard to their mere exter- 
nals or in regard to their contents. 

Hardly any branch or department of bib¬ 
liography has as yet been quite adequately 
treated. The reduction of bibliographic 
material to something like method and 
system was undoubtedly the work of France. 
Brunet’s Manuel du Libraire, containing, in 
an alphabetical form, a list of the most valu¬ 
able and costly books of all literatures; 
Barbier’s Dictionnaire des Ouvrages Ano- 
nyines; Renouard’s Catalogued’un Amateur, 
for a long time the best guide of French col¬ 
lectors; and the Bibliographie de la France, 
recording the yearly accumulation of literary 
works, were all first works in their respec¬ 
tive departments. The authors of anony¬ 
mous and pseudonymous w r orks are made 
known in Barbier’s Dictionnaire des Ouv¬ 
rages Anonymes et Pseudonymes (Paris, 
1806-9), treating only of French and Latin 
works; Qu^rard’s Dictionnaire des Ouvrages 
Poiyonymes et Anonymes de la Litterature 

487 


Franchise (Paris, 1854-56), and his Super- 
cheries Litt6raires D6voil6es (Literary 
Frauds Unveiled, Paris, 1845-56). Lorenz’s 
Catalogue G6n6ral de la Librairie Francaise 
(1867-87), gives all books published in 
France in 1840-85. 

The beginnings of English bibliography 
are to be found in Blount’s Censura Cele- 
briorum Auctorum (1690), and Oldys’ Bri¬ 
tish Librarian (1737). Among library cata¬ 
logues of which it can boast are those of 
the Bodleian Library, the British Museum 
(only partly printed), and the Advocates’ 
Library, Edinburgh. Catalogues compiled 
on a scientific system, by which the reader 
is assisted in his researches after books on a 
particular subject, are not uncommon on the 
European continent; but the only extensive 
one of the kind in Britain is that of the 
Signet Library, Edinburgh. A valuable 
classified catalogue, so far as it goes, is Son- 
nenschein’s The Best Books, a guide to 
about 25,000 modern works on all subjects. 
Of other English bibliographical works we 
may mention the Typographical Antiquities 
of Ames, Herbert, and Dibdin; Brydges’ Cen¬ 
sura Literaria (1805); Dibdin’s Bibliogra¬ 
phical Decameron (1817); Dr. Robert Watt’s 
Bibliotheca Britannica (1824, 4 vols., two of 
subjects and two of authors); Lowndes’ 
Bibliographer’s Manual, edited by H. G. 
Bohn, 1869; S. A. Allibone’s Critical Dic¬ 
tionary of English Literature and British 
and American Authors, 1859-71; &c. The 
bulky booksellers’ catalogues of Bohn and 
Quaritch; Low’s English Catalogue of books 
published from 1835 onwards, in continua¬ 
tion of the London Catalogue giving all 
English books published from 1700; and the 
Reference Catalogue of Current Literature 
are also valuable bibliographical works. 
The Dictionary of the Anonymous and 
Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain 
by Halkett and Laing (4 vols. 1882-88) 
is of high value. American literature has 
already given rise to a series of bibliographi¬ 
cal works on both sides of the Atlantic, e.g. 
Ternaux-Com pans, Biblioth&que Am6ri- 
caine, 1837; Rich’s Bibliotheca Americana 
Nova, giving books published between 
1700 and 1844; Bibliographical Catalogue of 
Books, Translations of the Scriptures, and 
other publications in the Indian Tongues 
of the United States, 1849; Duyckinck’s 
Cyclopedia of American Literature, 1856; 
Trlibner’s Bibliographical Guide to Ameri¬ 
can Literature, 1856; and the General 
American Catalogue compiled by Lynda 



BIBLIOMANCY - 

E. Jones and F. Leypoldt, 1880 (with later 
continuations). 

Of German bibliographical works we 
shall only mention Heinsius’ Allgemeines 
Bucherlexikon, giving books published be¬ 
tween 1700 and 1888, and Keyser’s Voll- 
standiges Bucherlexikon, giving books pub¬ 
lished between 1750 and 1882. German 
bibliography is particularly rich in the litera¬ 
ture of separate sciences; and the biblio¬ 
graphy of the classics and of ancient editions 
was founded by the Germans. See also 
Bibliomania. 

Bib'liomancy, divination performed by 
means of books, and especially of the Bible; 
also called sortes biblicce , or sortes sanctorum. 
It consisted in taking passages at hazard, 
and drawing indications thence concerning 
things future, in the same way that the 
ancients drew prognostications from the 
works of Homer and Virgil. In 465 the 
Council of Vannes condemned the practice, 
as did the Councils of Agde and Auxerre. 
But in the twelfth century we find it em¬ 
ployed as a mode of detecting heretics, and 
in the Gallican Church it was long practised 
in the election of bishops, the installation of 
abbots, &c. 

Biblioma'nia (‘book-madness’), a passion 
for possessing curious books, which has 
reached its highest development in France 
and England, though originating, like Tuli- 
pomania, in Holland, towards the close of 
the seventeenth century. The true biblio- 
manist is determined in the purchase of 
books, less by the value of their contents, 
than by certain accidental circumstances 
attending them, as that they belong to par¬ 
ticular classes, are made of singular mate¬ 
rials, or have something remarkable in their 
history. One of the most common forms of 
the passion is the desire to possess complete 
sets of works, as of the various editions of 
the Bible or of single classics; of the editions 
in usum Dclphini and cum notis variorum; 
of the Italian classics printed by the Aca¬ 
demy della Crusca; of the works printed by 
the Elzevirs or by Aldus. Scarce books, 
prohibited books, and books distinguished 
for remarkable errors or mutilations have 
also been eagerly sought for, together with 
those printed in the infancy of typography, 
called incunabula , first printed editions 
(editiones principes) and the like. Other 
works are valued for their miniatures and 
illuminated initial letters, or as being printed 
upon vellum, upon paper of uncommon 
materials, upon various substitutes for paper, 


- BICKERSTAFF. 

or upon coloured paper, in coloured inks, or 
in letters of gold or silver. In high esteem 
among bibliomanists are works printed on 
large paper, with very wide margins, es¬ 
pecially if uncut, also works printed from 
copper plates, editions-de-luxe, and limited 
issues generally. Bibliomania often extends 
to the binding. In France the bindings of 
Derome and Bozerian are most valued; in 
England those of Charles Lewis and Roger 
Payne. Many devices have been adopted 
to give a factitious value to bindings. Jef¬ 
fery, a London bookseller, had Fox’s His¬ 
tory of King James II. bound in fox-skin; 
and books have been more than once bound 
in human skin. The edges of books are 
often ornamented with paintings, &c., and 
marginal decoration is frequently an element 
of considerable value. Another method of 
gratifying the bibliomanist taste is that of 
enriching works by the addition of engrav¬ 
ings—illustrative of the text of the book— 
and of preparing only single copies. 

Bicanere. See Bikaner. 

Bicarbonate, a carbonate derived from 
carbonic acid (H-, CO a ) by replacing one of 
the atoms of hydrogen by a metal. Bicar¬ 
bonate of sodium (Na HCO a ) is used as an 
ant-acid, and effervescing liquors are usually 
produced by mixing it with tartaric acid. It 
is also the chief ingredient of baking-powder. 

Bice, the name of two colours used in 
painting, one blue the other green, and both 
native carbonates of copper, though inferior 
kinds are also prepared artificially. 

Bi'ceps, the large muscle in front of the 
upper arm. See Arm. 

Bicetre (be-satr), a village of France, 
s.w. of Paris, with a famous hospital for old 
men and an asylum for lunatics, together 
forming one vast establishment. The neat 
little articles of wood and bone fabricated 
by the inmates are known as Bicetre ivork. 

Bichat (be-sha), MarieFranqoisXavier, 
French anatomist and physiologist, born at 
Tboirette, dep. of Ain, 1771, died 1802. 
He wrote Trait5 des Membranes, which was 
translated into almost all the languages of 
Europe, Recherches sur la Vie et la Mort, 
and Anatomie Genera 1 ^—a complete trea¬ 
tise on anatomy and physiology. Bichat 
was the first who recognized the identity of 
the tissues in the different organs. 

Bick'erstaff, Isaac, dramatic writer, born 
in Ireland about 1735, died in obscurity on 
the Continent about 1812. He wrote many 
successful pieces for the stage, some of which 
are still popular, and was a friend of Gar- 

488 



BICKERSTETH-BIDPA1. 


rick, Boswell, &c.—In English literature the 
name Isaac Bicker staff occurs as the name 
assumed by Swift in his controversy with 
Partridge, the almanac maker, and also as 
the pseudonym of Steele as editor of the 
Tatler. 

Bick'ersteth, Rev. Edward, clergyman 
of the Church of England, born 1786, died 
1850. Was in business as a solicitor in 
Norwich for a time, but took orders and 
went to Africa in 1816 to reorganize the 
stations of the Church Missionary Society. 
Returning to England he was chosen secre¬ 
tary to that society. In 1830 he became 
rector of Watton in Hertford, and was one 
of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance. 
His publications, which had an immense 
circulation, included the Christian Student, 
A Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, A Trea¬ 
tise on Prayer, The Signs of the Times, The 
Restoration of the Jews, A Practical Guide 
to the Prophecies, besides sermons and 
tracts without number. 

Bicuiba (be-ko-e'ba), a Brazilian tree of 
the nutmeg genus (Myristica officinalis ), 
whose fruits yield a fat or oil similar to that 
of nutmegs. 

Bi'cycle, a light vehicle impelled by the 
rider, consisting of two wheels placed one 
before the other, the front or driving wheel 
being very much larger than the rear wheel. 
The driving-wheel revolves by the pressure 
of the rider’s feet on two cranks attached 
to its axle, and is connected with the rear 
wheel by a bearing shaft. The rider sits 
upon a saddle, attached to a steel spring, 
above and between the two wheels, and 
steers the machine by means of a handle, 
which turns the driving-wheel in any re¬ 
quired direction. It is kept in an upright 
position by the action of the rider’s body 
and legs, by the steering power, and also 
by its own momentum. The speed attained 
by an expert rider is considerable, 22 miles 
an hour having been covered. 

Bidar (be'dar), a town of India, in the 
Nizam’s Dominions, 75 miles N.w. of Hai- 
danibad; noted for the metal ware to which 
it has given its name. See Bide?’)/. 

Bidasso'a, a river of North-eastern Spain, 
forming for some distance the boundary 
between France and Spain. In 1813 Wel¬ 
lington effected the passage of the Bidassoa 
and entered France. 

Biddeford (bid'e-ford), a thriving town, 
United States, Maine, on the Saco, opposite 
to the town of Saco, with which it is con¬ 
nected by several bridges. The river falls, 

489 


42 feet high, afford valuable water-power. 
Pop. 1890, 14,443. 

Bid'dery. See Bidery. 

Biddle, John, father of the modern Uni¬ 
tarians, born in 1615 at Wotton under- 
Edge, in Gloucestershire, died in prison 
1662. He was educated at Oxford, and 
became master of a free-school at Glou¬ 
cester. He was repeatedly imprisoned for 
his anti-Trinitarian views, and the West¬ 
minster Assembly of Divines having got 
parliament to decree the punishment of 
death against those who should impugn the 
established opinions respecting the Trinity 
were eager for his punishment, but the act 
was not put in force. A general act of ob¬ 
livion in 1652 restored him to liberty, when 
he immediately disseminated his opinions 
both by preaching and by the publication 
of his Twofold Scripture Catechism. He 
was again imprisoned, and the law of 1648 
was to be put in operation against him when, 
to save his life, Cromwell banished him to St. 
Mary’s Castle, Scilly, and assigned him a 
hundred crowns annually. Here he re¬ 
mained three years, until the Protector 
liberated him in 1658. He then continued 
to preach his opinions till the death of Crom¬ 
well, and also after the Restoration, when 
he was committed to jail in 1662, and died 
a few months after. He wrote Twelve 
Arguments against the Deity of the Holy 
Spirit; Confession of Faith concerning the 
Holy Trinity; &c. 

Bideford (bid'e-ford), a munic. bor. and 
seaport, England, county Devon, 44 miles 
N. of Plymouth, picturesquely situated on 
both sides of the Torridge, 4 miles from the 
sea. Its industries embrace coarse earthen¬ 
ware, ropes, sails, &c. Its shipping trade 
was formerly large, but is not now of much 
importance. Pop. 1891, 7908. 

Bid'ery (from Bidar , a town in India), 
an alloy, primarily composed of copper, 
lead, tin, to every 3 oz. of which 16 oz. of 
spelter (zinc) are added. Many articles of 
Indian manufacture, remarkable for ele¬ 
gance of form and gracefully-engraved pat¬ 
terns, are made of it. It is said not to rust, 
to yield little to the hammer, and to break 
ordy when violently beaten. Articles formed 
from it are generally inlaid with silver or 
gold and polished. 

Bidpai (bid'pi), or Pilpai (pil'pl), the 
reputed author of a very ancient and popu¬ 
lar collection of Eastern fables. The original 
source of these stories is the old Indian 
collection of fables called Panchatantra, 



BIEBRICH ■ 

which acquired its present form under Bud¬ 
dhist influences not earlier than the second 
century B.c. It was afterwards spread over 
all India and handed down from age to age 
in various more or less different versions. 
An abridgment of this collection is known 
as the Hitopadesa. The Panchatantra was 
translated into Pehlevi in the sixth century 
of our era. This translation was itself the 
basis of a translation into Arabic made in 
the eighth century; and this latter trans¬ 
lation—in which the author is first called 
Bidpai, the chief of Indian philosophers— 
is the medium by which these fables have 
been introduced into the languages of the 
West. The first English translation was 
published in 1570. 

Biebrich (be'briA), a town of Prussia, 
district Wiesbaden, on the right bank of 
the Bhine, with a fine castle, formerly the 
residence of the dukes of Nassau. Pop. 
9669. 

Biel (bell. See Bienne. 

Biela’s (be'la) Comet, discovered by M. 
Biela (1782-1856), an Austrian officer, in 
1826. Its periodic time was determined as 6 
years 38 weeks. It returned in 1832, 1839, 
1846, and 1852. On the latter two occasions 
it was in two parts, each having a distinct 
nucleus and tail. It has not since been 
seen as a comet; but in 1872, 1879, and 
1885, when the earth passed through the 
comet’s track, immense flights of meteors 
were seen, which have been connected with 
the broken-up and dispersed comet. 

Bielef (bye-lef), a town in Russia, govern¬ 
ment of Tula, with manufactures of soap, 
leather, &c., and a considerable trade. Pop. 
8123. 

Bielefeld (be'le-felt), a town of Prussia, 
in the province of Westphalia, 38 miles E. 
from Munster; one of the chief places in 
Germany for flax-spinning and linen manu¬ 
facture. Pop. 34,931. 

Bielgorod (byel'go-rod), a town, Russia, 
government of, and 76 miles S. from the 
town of Kursk, on the Donetz. It is the 
seat of an archbishop’s see, and has impor¬ 
tant fairs. Pop. 15,200. 

Bielitz (be'lits), a town, Austrian Silesia, 
42 miles w.s.w. erf Cracow, on the Biala, 
which divides Silesia from Galicia, with 
manufactures of woollens and linens, dye- 
works and print-fields. Pop. 13,060. 

Biella (be-el'la), a town of North Italy, 
province of Novara, 36 miles N.N.E. of Turin, 
the seat of a bishop. It has manufactures 
of woollen and linen cloth. Pop. 15,000. 


— BIGAMY. 

Bielo-Ozero (bya-lo-o-za/ro; ‘white lake,’ 
from its white clay bottom), a Russian lake, 
government of Novgorod, 25 miles long by 
20 broad. Its surplus waters are conveyed 
to the Volga by the river Sheksna. 

Bielopol (bya'lo-pol), a Russian town, 
government of Kharkov. Pop. upwards of 
12 , 000 . 

Bielsk (byelsk), a town of Russia, gov. of 
Grodno. Pop. 10,000. 

Bielzy (byel'tsi), town of Russia, prov. 
Bessarabia. Pop. 7000. 

Bienhoa (bi-en-hwa'), a town in Cochin- 
China, capital of a province of the same 
name, 20 miles N.w. of Saigon. Taken by 
the French in 1861, now one of their for¬ 
tified posts. 

Bien'nial, a plant that requires two sea¬ 
sons to come to maturity, bearing fruit and 
dying the second year, as the turnip, carrot, 
wallflower, &c. 

Bienne (bi-an), or Biel, a town, Switzer¬ 
land, canton of Bern, 16 miles N.w. of Bern, 
beautifully situated at the N. end of the lake 
of same name, and at the foot of the Jura. 
Pop. 11,623.—The lake is about 10 miles 
long by 3 broad. It receives the waters of 
Lake Neufchatel by the Thiel and discharges 
itself into the Aar. 

Bies-Bosch (bes'bosk), a marshy sheet of 
water interspersed with islands, between 
the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and 
South Holland, formed in 1421 by an inun¬ 
dation which destroyed seventy-two villages 
and 100,000 people. 

Bievre (bi-a-vr), Marquis de, born 1747, 
died 1789; served in the corps of the French 
musketeers, was a life-guard of the King of 
France, and acquired much reputation by 
his puns and repartees. He is the author 
of several amusing publications, including 
Le Stiducteur, a comedy in verse; an Al- 
manach des Calembourgs or collection of 
puns; and there is also a collection of his 
jests called Bievriana. 

Biffin, a variety of excellent kitchen apple, 
often sold in a dry and flattened state. 

Bifrost (bif'roust), in northern mythology 
the name of the bridge represented as 
stretching between heaven and earth (As- 
gard and Midgard); really the rainbow. 

Big Rapids, capital of Mecostaco., Mich., 
65 miles N. of Grand Rapids; heavy lum¬ 
bering trade, &c. Pop. 1890, 5303. 

Big'amy, the act or state of having two 
(or more) wives or husbands at once, an 
offence by the laws of most states. By the 
law of England bigamy is a felony, punish- 

490 


BILDERDIJK. 


BIGG 


able with penal servitude for any term not 
exceeding seven years and not less than 
three years, or imprisonment, with or with¬ 
out hard labour, not exceeding two years. 
If the party’s wife or husband shall have 
been absent continuously for seven years 
and not known to be alive, the penalty is 
not incurred. The statutory provisions in 
the United States against bigamy are in 
general similar to and copied from the 
English statute, excepting as to the punish¬ 
ment, which differs in many of the States. 

Bigg, a variety of barley, four-rowed, 
suitable for cultivation in more northerly 
localities. 

Biggleswade, a town in England, county 
Bedford, giving name to a pari. div. of the 
county; manufactures of straw-plait. Pop. 
4244. 

Big Horn, a river of the United States 
in Wyoming and Montana, the largest tri¬ 
butary of the Yellowstone. 

Big-horn, the Haplocerus montdnus or 
wild sheep of the Rocky Mountains, named 
from the size of its horns, which are 31r feet 
long, the animal itself being of the same 
height at the shoulder. The big-horns are 
gregarious, going in herds of twenty or 
thirty, frequenting the craggiest and most 
inaccessible rocks, and are wild and untam¬ 
able. It is called also Rocky Mountain 
goat. 

Bigno'nia, a genus of plants of many 
species, inhabitants of hot climates, nat. 
order Bignoniaceae, usually climbing shrubs 
furnished with tendrils; flowers mostly in 
terminal or axillary panicles; corolla trum¬ 
pet-shaped, hence the name of trumpet- 
floicer commonly given to these plants. All 
the species are splendid plants when in 
blossom, and many of them are cultivated 
in our gardens. B. Leucoxylon, a native of 
Jamaica, is a tree 40 feet high; the leaves 
of B. Chica yield a red colouring matter, 
with which the Indians paint their bodies; 
B. radicans, or Tecoma radicans , is a much- 
admired species. 

Bihacs (be-hach'), or Bihatch, a town 
and fortress in Bosnia, the possession of 
which has often been contested during the 
Turkish wars. Pop. 3000. 

Bijapur. See Bejapoor. 

Bijayanagur, an ancient and celebrated 
city of Hindustan, now in ruins, in the 
Bombay presidency, 30 miles N.w. of Bel¬ 
lary. It contains the remains of several 
magnificent temples, specimens of the purest 
style of Hindoo architecture. 

491 


Bijnaur', town of Hindustan, North¬ 
western Provinces, 3 miles from the Ganges. 
Pop. 15,147. 

Bikaner', a native state of Rajputana, 
India, under the superintendence of a poli¬ 
tical agent and the governor-general’s agent 
for R;'yjputana, lying between 27° 12' and 
30° 12' n. lat. and 72° 15' and 73° 50' e. 
long. Area, 22,340 sq. miles; pop. 509,023. 
—Bikaner, the capital, is surrounded by a 
fine wall 3£ miles in circuit. It has a fort, 
containing the rajah’s palace, is irregularly 
built, but with many good houses, and 
manufactures blankets, sugar-candy, pot¬ 
tery, &c. Pop. including suburbs, 43,283. 

Bi'lander, a small trading vessel with 
two masts, having a fore and aft mainsail 
(on the after mast) bent to a yard that is 
inclined at an angle of about 45°, manage¬ 
able By four or five men, and used chiefly 
in the canals of the Low Countries. 

Bilaspur (bi-las-por'), a district in the 
chief commissionership of the Central Pro¬ 
vinces of India, lying between 21° 22' and 
23° 6' N. lat., and between 80° 48' and 83° 
10' E. long. Area, 7798 sq. miles ; pop. 
1,017,327. The administrative headquar¬ 
ters of the district are at Bilaspur, which is 
also the principal town. It is pleasantly 
situated on the south bank of the Arpa, and 
has a population of 7775. 

Bilba'o, a city in Northern Spain, capital 
of the province of Biscay or Bilbao, on the 
navigable Nervion, 8 miles from the sea. 
It has a cathedral and several convents; also 
manufactures of hardware, earthenware, 
leather, and paper, and possesses large ship¬ 
yards and iron-foundries. It exports large 
quantities of iron ore. Pop. 33,513. 

Bilberry. See Whortleberry. 

Bilboes (bil'boz), an apparatus for confin¬ 
ing the feet of offenders, especially on board 



Bilboes, from the Tower of London. 


ships, consisting of a long bar of iron with 
shackles sliding on it and a lock at one end 
to keep them from getting off, offenders 
being thus ‘ put in irons.’ 

Bilderdijk (bil'der-dlk), Willem, an 
eminent Dutch poet, born 1756, died 1831. 
He studied at Leyden, and cultivated poetry 
while practising as an advocate at the 
Hague. On the invasion of the Nether¬ 
lands by the French he left his country and 







BILE — 

lived abroad for many years, part of the 
time in London, where he delivered, in the 
French language, lectures on literature and 
poetry. He returned to Holland in 1799, 
and soon afterwards published some of his 
principal works, many of which are transla¬ 
tions or imitations. Of his own composi¬ 
tions the principal are Rural Life, The Love 
of Fatherland, The Maladies of Scholars, 
The Destruction of the First World, &c. 
When Napoleon returned from Elba Bil- 
derdijk produced a number of war-songs, 
which are considered among the best in 
Dutch poetry. He also wrote a treatise on 
Geology, a History of Holland, in 10 vols., 
&c. 

Bile, a yellow bitter liquor, separated 
from the blood by the primary cells of the 
liver, and collected by the biliary ducts, 
which unite to form the hepatic duct, 
whence it passes into the duodenum, or by 
the cystic duct into the gall-bladder to be 
retained there till required for use. The 
most obvious use of the bile in the animal 
economy is to aid in the digestion of fatty 
substances and to convert the chyme into 
chyle. It appears also to aid in exciting 
the peristaltic action of the intestines. The 
natural colour of the faeces seems to be 
owing to the presence of bile. The chemical 
composition varies with the animal which 
yields it, but every kind contains two essen¬ 
tial constituents, the bile salts and the bile 
colouring matter associated with small quan¬ 
tities of cholesterine, fats, and certain min¬ 
eral salts, chiefly chloride of sodium, phos¬ 
phates, and iron. Some of the constituents 
of the bile return into the blood by absorp¬ 
tion, the colouring matters and cholesterine 
being the principal excrementitious sub¬ 
stances. When bile is not secreted in due 
quantity from the blood the unhealthy con¬ 
dition of biliousness results. 

Biled-ul-gerid (‘land of dates’), a tract 
of North Africa, lying between the s. decli¬ 
vity of Atlas and the Great Desert, noted 
for the production of date palms. 

Bilge, the breadth of a ship’s bottom, or 
that part of her floor which approaches to 
a horizontal direction, on which she would 
rest if aground.— Bilge-water, water which 
enters a ship and lies upon her bilge or 
bottom; when not drawn off it becomes 
dirty and offensive.— Bilge ways, planks 
of timber placed under a vessel’s bilge 
on the building-slip to support her while 
launching. 

Biliary Cal'culus, a concretion which 


- BILL. 

forms in the gall-bladder or bile-ducts; 
gall-stone. It is generally composed of a 
peculiar crystalline fatty matter which has 
been called cholesterine. 

Bilin', a town, Bohemia, 42 miles N.w. 
Prague, prettily situated in the vale of the 
Bila, and celebrated for its mineral waters, 
which are drunk on the spot and largely 
exported, being useful in cases of rheuma¬ 
tism, stone, scrofula, Bright’s disease, &c. 
Pop. 5000. 

Biliton'. See Billiton. 

Bill, a cutting instrument hook-shaped 
towards the point, or with a 
concave cutting edge; useu 
by plumbers, basket-makers, 
gardeners, &c., made in vari¬ 
ous forms and fitted with a 
handle. Such instruments, 
when used by gardeners for 
pruning hedges, trees, &c., 
are called hedge-bills or bill¬ 
hooks. Also an ancient mili¬ 
tary weapon, consisting of a 
broad hook - shaped blade, 
having a short pike at the 
back and another at the sum¬ 
mit, attached to a long handle, 
used by the English infantry 
especially in defending them- 0 ld English Bill, 
selves against cavalry down time of Elizabeth, 
to the fifteenth century, and 
by civic guards or watchmen down to the 
end of the seventeenth. 

Bill, a written or printed paper contain¬ 
ing a statement of any particulars. In 
common use a tradesman’s account, or a 
printed proclamation or advertisement, is 
thus called a bill. In legislation a bill is 
a draft of a proposed statute submitted to 
a legislative assembly for approval, but not 
yet enacted or passed and made law. When 
the bill has passed and received the necessary 
assent, it becomes an act. See Parliament. 

Bill of Attainder and of Pains and Penal¬ 
ties are forms of procedure in the British 
Parliament which were often resorted to in 
times of political agitation to procure the 
criminal condemnation of an individual. 
The person attainted lost all civil rights, 
he could have no heir, nor could he succeed 
to any ancestor, his estate falling to the 
crown. These bills were promoted by the 
crown, or the dominant party in Parliament, 
w T hen any individual obnoxious to them 
could not readily be reached by the ordinary 
forms of procedure. Parliament being the 
highest court of the kingdom could dispense 










BILL. 


w!th the ordinary laws of evidence, and 
even, if actuated by passion or servilely 
devoted to the authorities, condemn the 
accused in the most arbitrary manner. 
They were very common under the Tudors, 
and as late as 1820 the trial of Queen 
Caroline took place under a bill of pains 
and penalties. Bills of attainder are prohi¬ 
bited by the constitution of the United 
States. 

Bill of Costs is an account rendered by 
an attorney or solicitor of his charges and 
disbursements in an action, or in the con¬ 
duct of his client’s business. 

Bill of Entry, a written account of goods 
entered at the custom-house. 

Bill of Exchange (including promissory 
notes and inland bills or acceptances). A 
bill of exchange is defined as an order in 
writing addressed by one person to another, 
signed by the person giving it, requiring the 
person to whom it is addressed to pay on 
demand or at a fixed or determinable future 
time a certain sum of money to or to the 
order of a specified person or to bearer. 
Bills of exchange are divided into foreign 
and inland bills, but in mercantile usage the 
term bill of exchange is seldom applied to 
other than foreign bills. An inland bill of 
exchange, generally called a bill of accept¬ 
ance, has more in common with a promis¬ 
sory note than with a foreign bill of ex¬ 
change. We give the common forms of the 
three documents. 

(1) Promissory Note. 

f110.00. 

Philadelphia, 1st January, 1893. 

Three months after date I promise to pay 
to the order of W. S. [or * to W. S. or his order ' ] 
the sum of One Hundred and Ten Dollars, for 
value received. (Signed) J. D. 

(2) Inland Bill of Acceptance. 

$ 110 . 00 . 

Philadelphia, 1st January, 1893. 

Three months after date pay to our order 
[or ‘ to the oi’der of W. S. ’ ] the sum of One Hun¬ 
dred and Ten Dollars, for value received. 

(Signed) F. U. & Co. 

To Messrs. A. B. & Co., New York. 

This form is accepted by writing across the 
body of the bill • 

‘Accepted, 

A. B. & Co.’ 

(3) Foreign Bill of Exchange. 
$ 110 . 00 . 

Lima, 1st January, 1893. 

At sixty days’ sight of this first of exchange 
(second and third of same tenor and date unpaid) 

m 


pay to the order of W. S. the sum of One Hun¬ 
dred and Ten Dollars, value as advised [or, ‘which 

charge to our account,’ or ‘ to account of-as 

advised.’] (Signed) F. & Co. 

To F. B. & Co., Liverpool. 

(Second and third drawn in same form as the 
first, one only of the set being negotiable. In¬ 
stead of three copies being used, which is called 
drawing a bill in parts, one only may be drawn, 
the form then used being ‘ this sola of exchange.’) 

The acceptor of this bill writes across it the 
date on which it is presented, together with his 
signature, thus:— 

‘Accepted, 4th Feb., 1893, 

F. B. & Co.’ 

The person who makes or draws the bill 
is called the drawer, he to whom it is ad¬ 
dressed is, before acceptance, the drawee, 
and after accepting it, the acceptor; the 
person in whose favour it is drawn is the 
payee; if he endorse the bill to another, he 
is called the endorser, and the person to 
whom it is thus assigned is the endorsee or 
holder. A bill when properly stamped is 
negotiable, and may be discounted at a bank, 
or may pass from hand to hand by the pro¬ 
cess of endorsement; many names being fre¬ 
quently attached to one bill as endorsers, 
each of whom is liable to be sued upon the 
bill if it be not paid in due time. The 
value of the stamp required in Britain is 
Id. for £5, rising at fixed stages with the 
value of the bill at the rate of Is. per 
£100. The last phase in the negotiation 
of a bill is usually its being discounted 
with a banker. The merchant may either 
discount it with a bill-broker, who re-dis- 
counts it with the banker, or he may take 
it direct to the banker. The broker or 
banker deducts (as do also the previous 
negotiators of a bill) a discount, or equiva¬ 
lent for the use of the money he pays until 
the due date of the bill, when he expects it 
will be repaid him. There is usually a cur¬ 
rent rate of discount for first-class bills, 
which is determined in Great Britain by 
the rates of the Bank of England. When 
a bill reached the date of payment, and 
was not duly paid, it used to be noted or 
protested, but this is now only done with 
foreign bills. Protesting is a legal form, in 
which the payee is declared responsible for 
all consequences of the non-payment of the 
bill. Noting is a temporary form, used as 
a preliminary to protesting. It consists in 
a record by a notary-public of the presenta¬ 
tion of the bill, and of the refusal of the 
payee to honour it. Unless a bill is noted 
for non-payment on the due date, the en- 



BILL 


BILL-CHAMBER. 


dorsers are freed from responsibility to pay 
it. In determining the due date of a bill, 
a legal allowance, varying in different coun¬ 
tries, called days of grace, has to be taken 
into account. In Great Britain three days 
of grace are allowed on all bills indiscrimi¬ 
nately, except bills drawn on demand. A 
bill of exchange drawn and accepted merely 
to raise money on, and not given, like a 
genuine bill of exchange, in payment of a 
debt, is called an accommodation bill. Dif¬ 
ferent States in America have different 
laws respecting days of grace. 

Bill of Rights and Declaration of Rights, 
two documents which constituted the con¬ 
vention by which the Prince and Princess 
of Orange were called to the throne of 
England, and are the basis of the conditions 
on which the crown of England is still held. 
The Declaration of Rights, afterwards em¬ 
bodied in the bill, first recited the illegal 
acts of King James; secondly, declared 
these acts to be illegal; and thirdly, declared 
that the throne should be filled by the Prince 
and Princess of Orange in accordance with 
the limitations of the prerogative thus pre¬ 
scribed. It contains the following specific 
declarations:—‘That the pretended power 
of suspending laws and the execution of 
laws, by regal authority without consent of 
Parliament, is illegal; That levying of money 
for or to the use of the crown by pretence of 
prerogative without grant of Parliament, is 
illegal; That it is the right of the subjects to 
petition the king; That the raising or keep¬ 
ing a standing army within the kingdom in 
time of peace, unless it be with consent of 
Parliament, is illegal; That elections of 
members of Parliament ought to be free; 
That the freedom of speech or debates on 
proceedings in Parliament ought not to be 
impeached or questioned in any court or 
place out of Parliament; And that, for re¬ 
dress of all grievances, and for the amend¬ 
ing, strengthening, and preserving of the 
laws, parliaments ought to be held fre¬ 
quently. The Bill of Rights, passed in 
1689, confirmed these declarations, settled 
the crown upon Protestants, and declared 
that any king or queen of England who 
should marry a Papist would be incapable 
of reigning in England, and the subjects 
absolved from allegiance. 

Bill of Health, a certificate or instrument 
signed by consuls or other proper authori¬ 
ties, delivered to the masters of ships at 
the time of their clearing out from all ports 
or places suspected of being particularly 


subject to infectious disorders, certifying 
the state of health at the time that such 
ships sailed. 

Bill of Indictment, a written accusation 
submitted to a grand-jury. If the grand- 
jury think that the accusation is supported 
by probable evidence, they return it to the 
proper officer of the court endorsed with 
the words ‘a true bill,’ and thereupon the 
prisoner is said to stand indicted of the 
crime and bound to make answer to it. If 
the grand-jury do not think the accusation 
supported by probable evidence, they re- 
tui'n it with the words ‘no bill,’ whereupon 
the prisoner may claim his discharge. 

Bill of Lading, a memorandum of goods 
shipped on board a vessel, signed by the 
master of the vessel, who acknowledges the 
receipt of the goods and pi'omises to deliver 
them in good condition at the place directed, 
dangers of the sea excepted. Bills of lading 
can be transferred by endorsement; the 
endorsement transfers all rights and lia¬ 
bilities under the bill of lading of the origi¬ 
nal holder or consignee. 

Bill of Sale, a formal instrument for the 
conveyance or transfer of personal chattels, 
as household furniture, stock in a shop, 
shares of a ship. It is often given to 
a creditor in security for money borrowed, 
or obligation otherwise incurred, empower¬ 
ing the receiver to sell the goods if the 
money is not repaid with interest at the 
appointed time, or the obligation not other¬ 
wise discharged. 

Billaud-Varenne (bi-yo-va-ran), Jacques- 
Nicolas, a noted French revolutionist, was 
born at Rochelle 1756, died in Hayti 1819; 
he bore a principal part in the murders and 
massacres which followed the destruction of 
the Bastille; voted immediate death to Louis 
XVI.; and officiated as president of the 
Convention in Oct. 1793. In 1795, on a 
reaction having taken place against the 
ultra party, he was arrested and banished 
to Cayenne. 

Bill-broker, a financial agent or money- 
dealer, who discounts or negotiates bills of 
exchange, promissory-notes, &c. 

Bill-chamber, a department of the Court 
of Session in Scotland, in which one of the 
judges officiates at all times during session 
and vacation. All proceedings for summary 
remedies, or for protection against impend¬ 
ing proceedings, commence in the bill- 
chamber, such as interdicts. The process 
of sequestration or bankruptcy also issues 
from this department of the court. 

494 



BILLETING - 

Billeting, a mode of feeding and lodging 
soldiers when they are not in camp or bar¬ 
racks by quartering them on the inhabitants 
of a town. The necessity for billeting occurs 
chiefly during movements of the troops or 
when any accidental occasion arises for 
quartering soldiers in a town which has not 
sufficient barrack accommodation. The bil¬ 
leting of soldiers on private householders is 
now abandoned in Britain, but all keepers 
of inns, livery-stables, ale-houses, victualling 
houses, and similar establishments, are liable 
to receive officers and soldiers billeted on 
them. 

Billet-moulding, an ornament common 
in Norman architecture, consisting of an 
imitation of billets, or round pieces of wood, 
placed in a hollow moulding with an inter¬ 
val between each usually equal to their own 
length. 

Bill-fish, the gar-pike or long-nosed gar 
(Lepidosteus osseus), a fish common in the 
lakes and rivers of the U. States; but the 
name is also given to other fishes. 

Bill-hook. See Bill (cutting instrument). 

Billiards (bil'yerdz), a well-known game, 
probably (like its name) of French origin, 
played with ivory balls on a fiat table. 
Various modes of play, constituting many 
distinct games, are adopted, according to 
the tastes of the players, some being more 
in favour in one country, some in another. 
The common English billiard-table is an 
oblong, about 12 feet by 6, covered with fine 
and very smooth green cloth, on a perfectly 
level bed of slate, and having a raised edge 
all round lined with cushions which are 
made tolerably firm and elastic, much of the 
skill of the game consisting in calculating 
the rebound of the balls in various directions 
from the cushions. Along the edges of the 
table are six semicircular holes arranged at 
regular intervals in the cushion, through 
which the balls are allowed to drop into 
small nets called pockets, under the sides 
of the table. The pockets are placed one 
at each corner of the table, and two oppo¬ 
site each other in the middle of the long 
sides. Each player is provided with a cue 
to strike the balls. The cue is a wooden 
rod from 4 or 5 to 6 or 8 feet long, rounded 
in form, and tapering gradually from 1^ 
inch in diameter at the butt to f inch or less 
at the point, which is tipped with leather 
and rubbed with chalk to make the stroke 
smooth. In the common game two players 
engage. Each has a white ball, and a red 
ball is common to the two. In beginning 

495 


- BILLIARDS. 

the game the red ball is placed on a spot 
near one end of the table, and equidistant 
from the corner pockets. A line drawn 
across the table at the other end marks off 
a space called baulk. In this space a semi¬ 
circle is described, out of which the player, 
in commencing, must send his ball, either 
striking the red or giving his opponent a 
‘miss,’ that is, playing without striding the 
red ball, which scores one against him. 
When the game has commenced the player 
is at liberty to strike at either his opponent’s 
ball or the red, and continues to play as 
long as he succeeds in scoring. The whole 
of an uninterrupted run of play is called a 
break. There are various modes of scoring. 
When a player strikes both balls with his 
own it is called a cannon, and counts two; 
when he pockets his own ball, after striking 
another, it is called a losing hazard , and 
counts two if made off his opponent’s ball, 
three if off the red; when he pockets his 
opponent’s ball it counts two; when he 
pockets the red, three. When the player 
fails to strike either ball, it scores one 
against him; if he goes into a pocket with¬ 
out striking, it scores three against him. 
After the ordinary game the most favourite 
varieties are pyramids and pool. The former 
is so called from the position in which the 
balls are placed at the beginning of the game. 
It is played with fifteen balls; and the object 
of the players is to try who will pocket, or 
‘pot,’ the greatest number of balls. Pool 
is also a game of ‘potting,’ but is played 
somewhat differently. It is a favourite 
game with those who play for stakes, inso¬ 
much that it may be considered almost exclu¬ 
sively a gambling game. It embraces an in¬ 
definite number of players, each of whom is 
provided with a ball of a differentcolour from 
any of the others. They play in succession, 
and each tries to pot his opponent’s ball. If 
he succeeds with one he goes on to the next; 
if he fails another player takes his turn, 
playing first on the ball of the last player. 
There are thus two points which a pool- 
player has to aim at: to pot as many balls 
as possible, and to keep his ball in a safe 
position relatively to that of the following 
player, as the player whose ball is potted 
has to pay the penalty prescribed by the 
game. 

The common billiard-table used in France 
is smaller than the English, and has no 
pockets, the game being entirely a cannon 
game. This kind of table is now very com¬ 
mon in America, and there a four-pocket 



BILLINGSGATE-BINGEN. 


table is also in use. The American term 
for cannon is * carom,’ and in American play 
two red balls (or a red and a pink), and two 
white ones, are commonly employed. 

Billingsgate, the principal fish-market of 
London, on the left bank of the Thames, a 
little below London Bridge. It has been 
frequently improved, and was rebuilt in 
1852 and again in 1874-76. From the cha¬ 
racter, real or supposed, of the Billingsgate 
fish-dealers, the term Billingsgate is applied 
generally to coarse and violent language. 

Billington, Elizabeth, the most distin¬ 
guished female singer of her day in Eng¬ 
land, "born about 1768 in London, died in 
Italy in 1818. Her mother was an English 
vocalist, her father a Saxon musician named 
Weichsel. She appeared as a singer at the 
age of fourteen, and at sixteen married Mr. 
Billington, a double-bass player. She made 
her dehut as an operatic singer in Dublin, 
and afterwards appeared at Covent Garden. 
She visited France and Italy, and Bianchi 
composed the opera of Inez de Castro ex¬ 
pressly for her performance at Naples. In 
1802-11 she sang in Italian opera in Lon¬ 
don, and having amassed a handsome fortune 
she retired from the stage in 1811. Her 
private character was the cause of much 
scandal. 

Billion, in Britain and Germany the 
designation for a million of millions; among 
the French and in America a thousand mil¬ 
lions. A similar difference of usage exists 
in regard to trillion, quadrillion , &c. 

Billiton', a Dutch East Indian island be¬ 
tween Banca and the s.w. of Borneo, of an 
irregular sub-quadrangular form, about 40 
miles across. It produces iron and tin, and 
exports sago, cocoa-nuts, pepper, tortoise¬ 
shell, trepang, edible birds’-nests, &c. It 
was ceded to the British in 1812 by the 
Sultan of Palembang, but in 1824 it was 
given up to the Dutch. Pop. 32,210. 

Bil'lon, an alloy of copper and silver, in 
which the former predominates, used in 
some countries for coins of low value, the 
object being to avoid the bulkiness of pure 
copper coin. 

Billy-boy, a fiat-bottomed, bluff-bowed 
vessel, rigged as a sloop, with a mast that 
can be lowered so as to admit of passing 
under bridges. 

Bilma, an oasis of the Sahara about half 
way between Fezzan and Bornu, producing 
much salt. 

Bilsa. See Bhilsa, 

Bil'ston, a town, England, in Stafford¬ 


shire, forming part of the parliamentary 
borough of Wolverhampton; it has extensive 
manufactories of hardware. Pop. 23,453. 

Bi'mana, animals having two hands: a 
term applied by Cuvier to the highest order 
of Mammalia, of which man is the type 
and sole genus. By some naturalists man 
is classified as a sub-division of the order 
Primates, which includes also the apes, 
monkeys, and lemurs. 4 

Bimetallism, that system of coinage ; 
which recognizes coins of two metals (silver 
and gold) as legal tender to any amount; or- 
in other words, thf concurrent use of coins 
of two metals as a circulating medium, the 
ratio of value between the two being arbi¬ 
trarily fixed by law. It is contended by 
advocates of the system that by fixing a 
legal ratio between the value of gold and 
silver, and using both as legal tender, fluc¬ 
tuations in the value of the metals are 
avoided, whilst the prices of commodities 
are rendered steadier. 

Bim'lipatam, a seaport of India, Madras 
Presidency, with a brisk trade. Pop. 8582. 

Binab', a town, Persia, pleasantly situated 
in the midst of orchards and vineyards, 55 
miles s.s.w. from Tabreez, and 8 miles E. of 
Lake Urumiya. Pop. about 7500. 

Binary, twofold; double.— Binary com¬ 
pound, in chemistry, a compound of two 
elements, or of an element and a compound 
performing the function of an element, or 
of two compounds performing the function 
of elements, according to the laws of com¬ 
bination. The term is now little used.— 
Binary theory of salts, the theory which 
regarded all salts as being made up of two 
oxides, an acid oxide and a basic oxide; thus 
sodium carbonate as made up of soda (Na/)) 
and carbon dioxide (C0 2 ).— Binary star, a 
double star whose members revolve round 
a common centre of gravity. 

Binche (bansh), town of Belgium, prov. 
Hainaut, with manufactures of lace, pot¬ 
tery, &c. Pop. 9441. 

Bindrabund. See Brindaban. 

Bind-weed, the common name for plants 
of the genus Convolvulus, especially of (7. 
arvensis, and also of plants of the allied 
genus Calystegia, especially C. Soldanclla 
and C. sepium. The black bryony is called 
black bind-weed; Smilax is called rough 
bind-weed. Solanum Dulcamara (the bitter- ’ 
sweet) is the blue bind-weed of Ben Jon- 
son. 

Bing'en, a town of Germany, in Hesse- 
Darmstadt, on the left bank of the Pihine, 

496 


BINGHAM-BIOLOGY. 


in a district producing excellent wines. The 
Mausethurm or Mouse-tower in the middle 
of the river is the scene of the well-known 
legend of Bishop Hatto. Pop. 7215. 

Bing'ham, Joseph, English writer, born 
in 1668, died 1723; distinguished himself as 
a student at Oxford, and devoted his atten¬ 
tion particularly to ecclesiastical antiquities. 
He was compelled to leave the university 
for alleged heterodoxy, but was presented 
to the living of Headbourn-Worthy, near 
Winchester, and afterwards to that of Hav¬ 
ant, near Portsmouth. His great work, 
Origines Ecclesiastics?, or Antiquities of the 
Christian Church, in 10 vols., was published 
1708-1722. 

Bing'hamton, a town, United States, 
state of New York, at the junction of the 
Chenango and Susquehanna rivers, with 
numerous manufactures and an extensive 
Hour and lumber trade. Pop. 35,005. 

Bing'ley, a market town, W. Riding of 
Yorkshire, 15 miles w.N.w. of Leeds, with 
considerable manufactures of worsted, cot¬ 
ton, paper, and iron. Pop. 19,284. 

Bingley, Ward, the Garrick of the Dutch 
stage, was born at Rotterdam in 1755, of 
English parents; died at the Hague 1818; 
In 1799 he made his debut on the stage of 
Amsterdam, and almost from the fh’st took 
his place at the head of his profession, not 
only in the Dutch theatres, but also in 
those which performed French plays in 
Amsterdam and the Hague. 

Bin'nacle, or Bittacle, a case or box on 
the deck of a vessel near the steering appa¬ 
ratus, containing the compass and lights by 
which it can be read at night. 

Bin'ney, Rev. Thomas, D.D., LL.D., 
popular Independent preacher, theologian, 
and controversialist, born at Newcastle-on- 
Tyne 17 98, died 1874. He was pastor of 
Weigh House Chapel, London, for forty 
years; was a voluminous writer on polemi¬ 
cal subjects, his most successful venture as 
an author being Is it Possible to make the 
Best of Both Worlds? a work for young men. 

Binoc'ular, a field-glass or opera-glass, or 
a microscope suited for viewing objects with 
both eyes at once. 

Bino'mial, in algebra, a quantity consist¬ 
ing of two terms or members, connected by 
the sign + or The binomial theorem, is 
the celebrated theorem given by Sir Isaac 
Newton for raising a binomial to any 
power, or for extracting any root of it by 
an approximating infinite series. 

Bin'tang, an island of the Dutch East 
vol. 497 


Indies, at the s. extremity of the Malay 
Peninsula; area 450 sq. miles; yields cate¬ 
chu and pepper. 

Bin'turong (Arctictis binturong), a carni¬ 
vorous animal of the civet family, with a 
prehensile tail, a native of the Eastern 
Archipelago. 

Binue (bin'-u-e). See Benue. 

Bi'obio, a Chilian river, rises in Lake 
Huchueltui, flows in a N.w. direction for 180 
miles, and fall into the Pacific at the city of 
Concepcion. It gives name to a province 
of the country, with 100,000 inhabitants; 
area 4158 sq. miles. 

Biogen'esis, the history of life develop¬ 
ment generally; specifically, that depart¬ 
ment of biological science which speculates 
on the mode by which new species have 
been introduced; often restricted to that 
view which holds that living organisms can 
spring only from living parents. 

Biog'raphy, that department of literature 
which treats of the individual lives of men 
or women; and also, a prose narrative 
detailing the history and unfolding the cha¬ 
racter of an individual written by another. 
When written by the individual whose his¬ 
tory is told it is called an autobiography. 
This species of writing is as old as literature 
itself. In the first century after Christ Plu¬ 
tarch wrote his Parallel Lives; Cornelius 
Nepos, the I fives of Military Commanders; 
and Suetonius, the Lives of the Twelve 
Caesars. Modern biographical literature 
may be considered to date from the seven¬ 
teenth century, since which time individual 
biographies have multiplied enormously. 
Dictionaries of biography have proved ex¬ 
tremely useful, Moreri’s Dictionnaire His- 
torique et Critique, 1671, being perhaps the 
first of this class. During the present century 
have been published the Biographie Univer- 
selle, 85 vols., 1811-62; Nouvelle Biographie 
Generate, 46 vols., 1852-66; Chalmers’s 
General Biographical Dictionary, 32 vols., 
1812-17 ; Rose s Biographical Dictionary, 
12 vols., 1848-50; Leslie Stephen’s Diction¬ 
ary of National Biography, to be completed 
in about 50 volumes, the first of which ap¬ 
peared in January, 1885; and Apipleton’s 
Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. 
(1887-1889). 

Biol'ogy, a comprehensive term for those 
departments of science that treat of living 
beings, including under this head both ani¬ 
mals and plants. It therefore comprehends 
both botany and zoology in all their branches 
and details. 


33 



BION — 

Bi'on, born in Smyrna, or in its neigh¬ 
bourhood; an ancient Greek pastoral poet, 
flourished about 280 B.c. He wrote bucolic 
and erotic poems, fragments of which are 
extant. He is supposed to have spent the 
last years of his life in Sicily, where he was 
poisoned. 

Bioplasm. See Protoplasm. 

Biot (be-o), Jean Baptiste, Freneh 
mathematician and physicist, born at Paris 
1774, and died there 1862. He became 
professor of physics in the College de France 
in 1800, in 1803 member of the Academy 
of Sciences, in 1804 was appointed to the 
Observatory of Paris, in 1806 was made 
member of the Bureau des Longitudes, in 
1809 became also professor of physical astro¬ 
nomy in the University of Paris. In con¬ 
nection with the measurement of a degree 
of the meridian he visited Britain in 1817. 
He is especially celebrated as the discoverer 
of the circular polarization of light. Besides 
numerous memoirs contributed to the Aca¬ 
demy and to scientific journals, he wrote 
Essai de Geometrie Analytique; Traite de 
Physique Experimental et Matlnhnatique; 
and Traite Elementaire de Physique Ex¬ 
perimental, as well as works on the astro¬ 
nomy of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, 
and Chinese.—His son, Edouard Constant 
(born 1803, died 1850), was an eminent 
Chinese scholar. 

Bi'ped, an animal having two feet, applied 
to man and birds, indicating their mode of 
progression rather than the mere possession 
of two limbs. 

Bipen'nis, a double-headed axe, the wea¬ 
pon usually seen depicted in the hands of 
the Amazons in ancient works of art. 

Bi'pont (or Bipontine) Editions, famous 
editions of the classic authors, printed at 
Zweibriicken (Fr. Deux Ponts, L. Bipon- 
tium), in the Rhenish Palatinate. The col¬ 
lection forms 50 vols. 8vo, begun in 1779 
and finished at Strasburg. 

Biquadratic Equation, in algebra, an 
equation raised to the fourth power, or 
where the unknown quantity of one of the 
terms has four dimensions. An equation 
of this kind, when complete, is of the form 
x 4 + Ax 3 + Bx 2 + C.r + D — O, where A, B, C, 
and D denote any known quantities what¬ 
ever. 

Bir, or Bireh-jik, a town, Asiatic Turkey, 
62 miles n.e. Aleppo, on the Euphrates, at 
the point where the great caravan route 
from Syria to Bagdad crosses the river. 
Pop. 5000 t<o 6000. 


- BIRCH. 

Birague (be-rag), Reni£ de, born at Milan 
1507, died 1583. He sought an asylum in 
France from the hostility of Louis Sforza, 
and became a cardinal and chancellor of 
France. He was a party in the secret coun¬ 
cil at which the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
was organized; and he was generally believed 
to have repeatedly employed poison to rid 
himself and his patroness, Catharine de’ 
Medici, of persons who stood in their way. 

Birbhum, or Beerbhoom, a district of 
British India, in the Bardwan Division, 
lieutenant governorship of Bengal; area, 
1756 sq. miles; pop. 794,428. Chief manu¬ 
factures, silk and lacquered wares. 

Birch {Betula), a genus of trees, order 
Betulaceae, which comprises only the birches 
and alders, which inhabit Europe, Northern 
Asia, and North America. The common 
birch is indigenous throughout the north, 
and on high situations in the south of Eu¬ 
rope. It is extremely hardy, and only one 
or two other species of trees approach so 
near to the north pole. There are two 
varieties natives of Britain, BetUla alba, and 
B. alba pendula, or weeping-birch, the 
latter a very beautiful tree. The wood 
of the birch, which is light in colour, and 
firm and tough in texture, is used for chairs, 
tables, bedsteads, and the woodwork of 
furniture generally, also for fish-cas s and 
hoops, and for smoking hams and her¬ 
rings, as well as for many small articles. 
In France wooden shoes are made of it. 
The bark is whitish in colour, smooth and 
shining, separable in thin sheets or layers. 
Fishing-nets and sails are steeped with it to 
preserve them. In some countries it is made 
into hats, shoes, boxes, &c. In Russia the 
oil extracted from it is used in the prepa¬ 
ration of Russian leather, and imparts the 
well-known scent to it. In Lapland bread 
has been made from it. The sap, from the 
amount of sugar it contains, affords a kind 
of agreeable wine, which is produced by the 
tree being tapped during warm weather in 
the end of spring or beginning of summer, 
when the sap runs most copiously. The 
dwarf birch, Betula nana, a low shrub, two 
or three feet high at most, is a native of all 
the most northerly regions. Betula lento, 
the cherry-birch of America, and the black 
birch ( B. nigra) of the same country, pro¬ 
duce valuable timber, as do other American 
species. The largest of these is the yellow 
birch {B. lutea or excelsa) which attains the 
height of 80 feet. It is named from its bark 
being of a rich yellow colour. The paper 

498 



BIRCH-BIRD’S-EYE LIMESTONE. 


birch of America ( B . papyracVa) has a bark 
that may be readily divided into thin sheets 
almost like paper. From it the Indian bark 
canoes are made. 

Birch, Samuel, D.C.L., LL.D., oriental¬ 
ist, born in London 1813, died 1885. He 
entered the British Museum as assistant- 
keeper of antiquities in 1836, and ultimately 
became keeper of the Egyptian and Assy¬ 
rian antiquities. He was specially famed 
for his capacity and skill in Egyptology, and 
was associated with Baron Bunsen in his 
work on Egypt, contributing the philologi¬ 
cal portions relating to hieroglyphics. His 
principal works, besides numerous contribu¬ 
tions to the transactions of learned societies, 
to encyclopaedias, &c., include Gallery of 
Antiquities, 1842; Catalogue of Greek 
Vases, 18.>1; Introduction to the Study of 
Hieroglyphics, 1857; Ancient Pottery, 1858; 
Egypt from the Earliest Times, 1875. He 
edited Records of the Past, from 1873-80. 
He had the LL.D. degree from St. An¬ 
drews and Cambridge, D.C.L. from Oxford, 
besides many foreign academical distinc¬ 
tions. 

Birch, Thomas, an industrious historian 
and biographer, born in London in 1705, 
killed by a fall from his horse 1766. He 
took orders in the church in 1730, and ob¬ 
tained in 1732 a living in Essex. In 1734 
he engaged with others in writing the Gen¬ 
eral Historical and Critical Dictionary, 
founded on that of Bayle, and completed, 
in ten vols. fol., in 1741. He subsequently 
obtained various preferments in the church. 
Among, his numerous works are Life of 
the Right Hon. Robert Boyle, 1744; Life of 
Archbishop Tillotson, 1752; Memoirs of the 
Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1754; History of 
the Royal Society, 1757; &c. He was a 
friend and correspondent of Dr. Johnson. 

Birch-Pfeiffer (birA-pfi'fr), Charlotte, 
German dramatist and actress, born in 
Stuttgart 1800, died at Berlin 1868. She 
married Dr. Birch of Copenhagen in 1825, 
and obtained great success as a performer 
and an author. She was for some years 
manager of the Zurich theatre, and latterly 
of the Hoftheater in Berlin. She wrote 
several novels and some seventy plays. 

Bird, Edward, R.A., an English painter, 
born at Wolverhampton 1772, died at 
Bristol 1819. He became an academician 
in 1815. He excelled in historical and 
genre subjects. Among his chief pictures 
are the Surrender of Calais, Death of Eli, 
and Field of Chevy Chase. 

499 


Bird-bolt, a short, thick, blunt arrow for 
shooting birds with a cross-bow. 

Bird-call, an instrument for imitating the 
cry of birds in order to attract them so that 
they may be caught. 

Bird-catching Spider, a name applied 
to gigantic spiders of the genera Mygale and 
Epeira , more especially to the My gale avi- 
cularia, a native of Surinam and elsewhere 
which preys upon insects and small birds 
which it hunts for and pounces on. It is 
about two inches long, very hairy, and al¬ 
most black; its feet when spread out occupy 
a surface of nearly a foot in diameter. 

Bird-cherry, a species of cherry (Prunvs 
Padus), a very ornamental tree in shrub¬ 
beries from its purple bark, its bunches of 
white flowers, and its berries, which are 
successively green, red, and black. Its 
fruit is nauseous to the taste, but is greedily 
eaten by birds. The wood is much used 
for cabinet- work. It is common in the 
native woods of Sweden and Scotland. 

Bird-lime, a viscous substance used for 
entangling birds so as to make them easily 
caught, twigs being for this purpose smeared 
with it at places where birds resort. It is 
prepared from holly-bark, being extracted 
by boiling; also from the viscid berries of 
the mistletoe. 

Bird of Paradise, the name for members 
of a family of birds of splendid plumage 
allied to the crows, inhabiting New Guinea 
and the adjacent islands. The family in¬ 
cludes eleven or twelve genera and a num¬ 
ber of species, some of them remarkably 
beautiful. The largest species is over 2 feet 
in length. The king bird of paradise ( Para - 
disea regia) is possibly the most beautiful 
species, but is rare. It has a magnificent 
plume of feathers, of a delicate yellow colour, 
coming up from under the wings, and falling 
over the back like a jet of water. The 
feathers of the P. major and P. minor are 
those chiefly worn in plumes. These splen¬ 
did ornaments are confined to the male bird. 

Bird Pepper. See Capsicum. 

Birds. See Ornithology. 

Bird-seed, seed for feeding cage-birds, 
especially the seed of Phaldris canariensis, 
or canary-grass. 

Bird’s-eye, a name of germander speed¬ 
well ( Veronica chamcedrys). 

Bird’s-eye Limestone, a division of the 
lower Silurian rocks of North America, ap¬ 
parently equivalent to the Llandeilo Beds, 
so called from the dark circular markings 
which stud many portions of its mass, and 


BIRD’S-EYE MAPLE-BIRKBECK. 


which have been referred to the impressions 

of a fucoid ( Phytopsis cellulosus), others re¬ 
garding them as the filled-up burrows of 
marine worms. 

Bird’s-eye Maple, curled maple, the wood 
of the sugar-maple when full of little knotty 
spots somewhat resembling birds’ eyes, 
much used in cabinet-work. 

Bird’s-eye View, the representation of 
any scene as it would appear if seen from a 
considerable elevation right above. 

Bird’s-foot, a common name for several 
plants, especially papilionaceous plants of 
the genus Ornithnpus , their legumes being 
articulated, cylindrical, and bent in like a 
claw. 

Bird’s-foot Trefoil, the popular name of 
Lotus corniculdtus, and one or two other 
creeping leguminous plants common in 
Britain. The common bird’s-foot trefoil is 
a common British plant, and is found in 
most parts of Europe as well as in Asia, 
North Africa and Australia, and is a useful 
pasture-plant. 

Bird's-nest, a name popularly given to 
several plants, as Monotropa uniflora, In¬ 
dian pipe or Bird’s-nest, a yellowish-white 
plant, common in woods from Canada to 
Georgia and west to Illinois. Monotrdpa 
Hypopitys, a parasitic ericaceous plant grow¬ 
ing on the roots of trees in fir woods, the 
leafless stalks of which resemble a nest of 
sticks; and A splenium Nidus, from the 
manner in which the fronds grow, leaving 
a nest-like hollow in the centre. 

Birds’-nests, Edible, the nests of the 
salangane ( Collocdlia fuciphdya) and other 
species of swifts (or swiftlets) found in the 
Indian seas. They are particularly abun¬ 
dant in the larger islands of the Eastern 
Archipelago. The nest has the shape of a 
common swallow’s nest, is found in caves, 
particularly on the sea-shore, and has the 
appearance of fibrous, imperfectly concocted 
isinglass. When procured before the eggs 
are laid the nests are of a waxy whiteness 
and are then esteemed most valuable; when 
the bird has laid her eggs they are of second 
quality; when the young are fledged and 
flown, of third quality. They appear to be 
composed of a mucilaginous substance se¬ 
creted by special glands, and not, as was 
formerly thought, made from a glutinous 
marine fucus or sea-weed. The Chinese 
consider the nests as a great stimulant and 
tonic, and it is said that about 8J millions of 
them are annually imported into Canton. 

Birds of Passage, birds which migrate 


with the season from a colder to a warmer, 
or from a warmer to a colder climate, 
divided into summer birds of passage and 
winter birds of passage. Such birds always 
breed in the country to which they resort 
in summer, i.e. in the colder of their homes. 
Among British summer birds of passage are 
the cuckoo, swallow, &c., which depart in 
autumn for a warmer climate; while in 
winter woodcocks, fieldfares, redwings, with 
many aquatic birds, as swans, geese, &c., 
regularly flock to Britain from the north. 
In America the robin is a familiar example. 
See Migration of Animals. 

Birds of Prey, the Accipitres or Raptores, 
including vultures, eagles, hawks or falcons, 
buzzards, and owls. 

Bird-spider. See Bird-catching Spider. 

Bireme (bl'rem), an ancient vessel with 
two banks or tiers of oars; trireme, one with 
three tiers; quadrireme, one with four; 
quinquereme, one with five. 

Bi'ren, or Bi'ron, Ernest John von, 
Duke of Courland, born in 1687, died 1772; 
was the son of a landed proprietor. He 
gained the favour of Anna, duchess of Cour¬ 
land and niece of Peter the Great of Rus¬ 
sia, and when she ascended the Russian 
throne (1730) Biren was loaded by her with 
honours, and introduced at the Russian 
court. He was made Duke of Courland in 
1737, and continued a powerful favourite 
during her reign, freely indulging his hatred 
against the rivals of his ambition. He 
caused 11,000 persons to be put to death, 
and double that number to be exiled. On 
the death of Anna he became regent, but 
he was exiled to Siberia in 1741. On the 
accession of Elizabeth to the throne she per¬ 
mitted his return to Russia, and in 1763 
the duchy of Courland was restored to him. 

Biret'ta, Birretta, Beret'ta, an ecclesi¬ 
astical cap of a squai'e shape with stiff sides 
and a tassel at top, usually black for priests, 
violet for bishops, and scarlet for cardinals. 

Biria, town of India, N.W. Provinces; 
sugar-refineries. Pop. 9160. 

Birkbeck, George, the founder of me¬ 
chanics’ institutes, born at Settle, York¬ 
shire, in 1776, died in London in 1841. He 
studied medicine at Edinburgh; was ap¬ 
pointed to the chair of natural and ex¬ 
perimental philosophy in the Andersonian 
Institute at Glasgow in 1799, where he 
successfully established a class for me¬ 
chanics. In 1806 he settled as a physician 
in London, and founded the London Me¬ 
chanics’ Institute in 1822, now known as 

500 



BIRKENFELD - 

the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Insti¬ 
tution. 

Bir'kenfeld (-felt), an outlying principa¬ 
lity belonging to Oldenburg, surrounded by 
the Rhenish districts of Coblentz and Treves- 
area 194 sq. m.; pop. 36,685. It has a 
market town of the same name. 

# Bir'kenhead, a parliamentary and muni¬ 
cipal borough of England, in Cheshire, on the 
estuary of the Mersey, opposite Liverpool. 
It has commodious docks with a lineal quay 
space of over 9 miles, and a complete system 
of railway communication for the shipment 
of goods and direct coaling of steamers. The 
principal industries are ship-building and 
engineering. Its commerce is in all respects 
a branch of that of Liverpool. The com¬ 
munication with Liverpool is by large steam¬ 
boats and by a railway tunnel under the 
bed of the Mersey 4^ miles long including 
the approaches, 21 feet high, 26 feet wide, 
the roof being about 30 feet below the bed 
, of the river; cost £1,250,000. The town 
returns one member to parliament. Pop. 
1891, 99,184. 

Birmingham, Jefferson county, Ala., and 
the most important seat of the iron indus¬ 
try in the South, is 95 miles N. N. W. of 
Montgomery, with foundries, mills, facto¬ 
ries and machine shops ; iron has devel¬ 
oped its growth from 3000 in 1880 to26,178. 
in 1890; its property is over $35,000,000. 

Bir'mingham, a great manufacturing city 
of England, situated on the small river Rea 
near its confluence with the Tame, in the 
N.w. of Warwickshire, with suburbs extend¬ 
ing into Staffordshire and Worcestershire; 
112 m. N.w. of London, and 97 S.E. of Liver¬ 
pool. It is the principal seat of the hard¬ 
ware manufacture in Britain, producing 
metal articles of all kinds from pins to 
steam-engines. It manufactures fire-arms 
in great quantities, swords, jewelry, buttons, 
tools, steel-pens, locks, lamps, bedsteads, 
gas - fittings, sewing-machines, articles of 
papier-mach^, railway-carriages, &c. The 
quantity of solid gold and silver plate manu¬ 
factured is large, and the consumption of 
these metals in electroplating is very great. 
Japanning, glass manufacturing, and glass- 
staining orpainting form important branches 
of industry, as also does the manufacture of 
chemicals. At Soho and Smethwick in the 
vicinity of the town are the famous works 
founded by Boulton and Watt, who there 
manufactured their first steam-engines, 
where gas was first used, plating perfected, 
and numerous novel applications tried and 

501 


-BIRS NIMRUD. 

experiments made. Among the public build¬ 
ings are the Town Hall, a handsome build¬ 
ing of the classic style, the Free Library, 
commenced in 1861,"the central portion of 
which was burned down in 1879, when the 
irreplaceable Shakspere library, and the 
collection of books, prints, &c., bearing on 
the antiquities of Warwickshire, were de¬ 
stroyed; the Midland Institute and Pub¬ 
lic Art Gallery, the Council House, &c. 
There are statues of the Prince Consort, 
James Watt, Sir Robert Peel. Lord Nelson, 
Hr. Priestley, Rowland Hill, Sir Josiah 
Mason, and others. The finest ecclesiastical 
building is the Roman Catholic cathedral, 
a noble Gothic structure. The principal 
educational establishments are Queen’s Col¬ 
lege, providing instruction in medicine, clas¬ 
sics, French, German, &c.; a Roman Catholic 
college (at Oscott); the Mason Scientific 
College, founded by Sir Josiah Mason, 1875, 
opened 1880, giving instruction in science, 
engineering, classics, &c.; the Free Grammar 
School; and a school of art and design. The 
Reform Act of 1832 made Birmingham a 
parliamentary borough with two members; 
the act of 1867 gave it a third; while the 
Redistribution Act of 1885 divided it into 
seven divisions, each sending one member 
to parliament. Birmingham is known to 
have existed in the reign of Alfred, in 872, 
and is mentioned in the Homesday Book 
(1086) by the name of Bermengeham. 
Another old name of the town is Bromwy- 
cham, a form still preserved very nearly in 
the local pronunciation Brummagem. It 
became a city by royal grant in 1888. In 
1881 the pop. was 400,774; in 1891, 429,171. 

Bir'nam, a hill in Perthshire, Scotland, 
1324 feet high, once covered by the royal 
forest immortalized by Shakspere in Mac¬ 
beth. 

Biron (be-ron), Charles de Gontaut, 
Duke op, born about 1562. He was a great 
favourite with Henry IV., who raised him 
to the rank of Admiral of France in 1592, 
and in 1598 made him a peer and duke. 
He was sent to England in 1601 to announce 
Henry’s marriage with Mary de Medici, 
but about the same time he was found 
guilty of forming a treasonable plot with 
the Duke of Savoy, and executed 1602. 

Biron, Ernest John. See Biren. 

Birr. See Parsonstown. 

Birs Nimrud, a famous mound in Baby¬ 
lonia, on the west side of the Euphrates, 

6 miles s.w. of Hillah, generally identified 
as the remains of the Tower of Babel. 



BIRSTAL-BISCHOFF. 


Birstal, a mining and manufacturing tn. 
of England, Yorkshire (W. Riding). Pop. 
6766. 

Birth, or Labour, in physiology, is the 
act by which a female of the class Mam¬ 
malia brings one of her own species into the 
world. When the foetus has remained its 
due time in the womb, and is in a condition 
to carry on a separate existence, it is ex¬ 
truded from its place of confinement, in 
order to live the life which belongs to its 
species, independently of the mother. The 
period of gestation is very different in dif¬ 
ferent animals, but in each particular spe¬ 
cies it is fixed with much precision. At 
the end of the thirty-ninth or the beginning 
of the fortieth week, the human child has 
reached its perfect state, and is capable of 
living separate from the mother; hence fol¬ 
lows in course its separation from her, that 
is, the birth. Contractions of the womb 
gradually come on, which are called, from 
the painful sensations accompanying them, 
labour-pains. The contractions of the womb 
take place in the same order as the enlarge¬ 
ment had previously done, the upper part 
of it first contracting, while the mouth of 
the womb enlarges and grows thin, and the 
vagina becomes loose and distensible. By 
this means the foetus, as the space within 
the womb is gradually narrowed, descends 
with a turning motion towards the opening, 
and some time after the head of the child 
appears and the rest of the body soon fol¬ 
lows. An artificial birth is that which is 
accomplished by the help of art, with instru¬ 
ments or the hands of the attendant. Pre¬ 
mature birth is one which happens some 
weeks before the usual time, namely, after 
the seventh and before the end of the 
ninth month. Late birth is a birth after 
the usual period of forty weeks. Although 
this is considered the usual time for legiti¬ 
mate births, the practice of the English law 
courts is to allow a longer time when the 
opinions of the faculty, or the peculiar cir¬ 
cumstances of the case, are in favour of a 
protracted gestation. In Scotland a child 
born after the tenth month is accounted 
illegitimate. Abortion and miscarriage 
take place when a foetus is brought forth so 
immature that it cannot live. They hap¬ 
pen from the beginning of pregnancy to the 
seventh month, but most frequently in the 
third month. 

Birth Mark. See Ncevus. 

Birth'right, any right or privilege to 
which a person is entitled by birth, such as 


an estate descendible by law to an heir, or 
civil liberty under a free constitution. See 

Primogeniture. 

Birth'root, a name of Trillium erectum 
and other American plants of the same ge¬ 
nus, having roots said to be astringent, tonic, 
and antiseptic. 

Births, Registration of. See Registra¬ 
tion. 

Birth'wort (Aristolochia clematitis), a 
European shrub so called from the supposed 
services of its root when used medically in 
parturition. 

Bisaccia (be-sach'a), an Italian town, prov. 
of Avellino (Principato Ultra), 30 m. e.n.e. 
of Avellino in the Apennines. Pop. 6189. 

Bisacquino (bis-ak-kwe'no), a town of 
Sicily, prov. Palermo. Pop. 9588. 

Bisalnag'ar, town of India, in Baroda, 
Bombay Presidency; manufactures of cot¬ 
ton; transit trade. Pop. 19,602. 

Bisalpur', town of India, N. W. Provinces, 
24 m. east of Bareli. Pop. 8903. 

Bis'cay (Spanish Vizcaya), a province of 
Spain near its north-east corner, one of the 
three Basque provinces (the other two being 
Alava and Guipuzcoa), area 850 sq. miles. 
The surface is generally mountainous; the 
most important mineral is iron, which is 
extensively worked; capital Bilbao. Pop. 
196,923. 

Biscay, Bay of, that part of the Atlantic 
which lies between the projecting coasts of 
France and Spain, extending from Ushant 
to Cape Finisterre, celebrated for its dan¬ 
gerous navigation. 

Bisceglie (be-shel'ya), a seaport of Italy, 
province of Bari, on the w. shore of the 
Adriatic, surrounded by walls, and in gen¬ 
eral badly built. The neighbourhood pro¬ 
duces good wine and excellent currants. 
-Pop. 21,765. 

Bischof (bish'of), Karl Gustav, German 
chemist and geologist; born at Nurnberg 
1792, died at Bonn 1870. He was appointed 
professor of chemistry at Bonn in 1822. He 
published in London 1841, Researches on 
the Internal Heat of the Globe (in English); 
but his chief work is the Lehrbuch der 
Chemischen und Physikalischen Geologie, 
1847-54. 

Bischoff (bish'of), Theodor Ludwig Wil¬ 
helm, German anatomist and physiologist, 
born in Hanover 1807; died at Munich 
1882. He became professor of comparative 
and pathological anatomy at Bonn in 1836; 
of anatomy at Giessen in 1844; and from 
1855 to 1878 he occupied a chair at Munich. 

502 



BISCHWEILER-BISHOP. 


He was the author of several treatises, and 
gained distinction by his researches in em¬ 
bryology. 

Bischweiler (bish'vi-ler), a town of Ger¬ 
many, Alsace-Lorraine, 12 miles n. of Stras- 
burg, on the Moder, with flourishing manu¬ 
factures of cloth. Pop. 6827. 

Biscuit (bis'ket; Fr. ‘twice-baked’), a kind 
of hard, dry bread which is not liable to spoil 
when kept. Biscuits are either fermented 
or unfermented, the kinds in ordinary use 
being generally fermented, while the unfer¬ 
mented biscuit is much used at sea, and 
hence called sea-biscuit. More than a hun¬ 
dred different sorts of biscuit are manufac¬ 
tured, and owing to the immense demand 
manual labour has long since been super¬ 
seded in the larger works by machinery. 
In making sea-biscuit the flour is mixed 
with water, converted into dough by a re¬ 
volving shaft armed with knives, kneaded 
with rollers, cut, stamped, conveyed on a 
framework drawn by chains through an 
oven open at both ends, and thence passed 
to a drying room—all without being touched 
by hand. Two thousand lbs. weight of bis¬ 
cuits can thus be turned out of a single oven 
in a day of ten hours. In many fancy bis¬ 
cuits the process is of course more elaborate, 
but even in these machinery plays an im¬ 
portant part. Sea-biscuit should continue 
sound for eighteen months or two years; its 
nutritive properties are to those of bread as 
eighteen to twenty-four. Meat biscuits are 
made of flour mixed with the soluble ele¬ 
ments of meat. 

Biscuit, in pottery, a term applied to 
porcelain and other earthenware after the 
first firing and before glazing. At this 
stage it is porous and used for wine-coolers, 
&c. 

Bise (bez), a keen northerly wind preva¬ 
lent in the north of the Mediterranean. 

Biseglie. See Bisceylie. 

Bisharin (bi-sha-ren'), a race inhabiting 
Nubia, between the Nile and the Red Sea, 
somewhat resembling the Bedouins, and 
living by pasturage. They are Mohamme¬ 
dans by religion; in character they are said 
to be cruel and treacherous. Personal pro¬ 
perty does not exist among them, the family 
or the tribe having the ownership. 

Bishnupur', town of India, Bankurd dis¬ 
trict of Bengal, with manufactures of cot¬ 
tons and fine silk cloth and a brisk trade. 
Pop. 18,863. 

Bishop, the highest of the three orders in 
the Christian ministry—bishops, priests, and 

503 


deacons—in such churches as recognize three 
grades. The name is derived from the Greek 
episkopos, meaning literally an overseer, 
through the A. Saxon biscop, bisceop. Ori¬ 
ginally in the Christian church, the name was 
used interchangeably with presbyter or elder 
for the overseer or pastor of a congregation; 
but at a comparatively early period a posi¬ 
tion of special authority was held by the 
pastors of the Christian communities belong¬ 
ing to certain places, and the name of bishop 
became limited to these by way of distinc¬ 
tion. There is much that is doubtful or 
disputed in regard to the history of the 
episcopal office. Roman Catholics and many 
others hold that it is of divine ordination 
and existed already in apostolic times; and 
they maintain the doctrine of the apostolical 
succession, that is to say, the doctrine of the 
transmission of the ministerial authority in 
uninterrupted succession from Christ to the 
apostles, and through these from one bishop 
to another. Presbyterians deny that the 
office was of divine or apostolic origin, and 
hold that it was an upgrowth of subsequent 
times easily accounted for, certain of the 
presbyters or pastors acquiring precedence 
as bishops over others, just as the bishops of 
the chief cities (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alex¬ 
andria, Constantinople, Rome) obtained pre¬ 
cedence among the bishops and received the 
title of metropolitan bishops; while the 
Bishop of Rome came to be regarded as the 
head of the church and the true successor of 
Peter. Already in the fifth century the 
popes had begun to send to the newly- 
elected metropolitan bishops (now called 
archbishops) the pallium, a kind of official 
mantle, as a token of their sanction of the 
choice. Two centuries later it became the 
custom to consecrate bishops by investing 
them with the ring and crosier, the former 
as a token of marriage with the church, the 
latter as a symbol of the pastoral office. 
This investiture, as giving validity to the 
election of the bishops, became the source 
of long-continued contests between the popes 
and the temporal sovereigns in the middle 
ages. At present in the R. Catholic Church 
the bishop is usually elected by the presby¬ 
ters of the diocese, subject to the approba¬ 
tion of the pope and of the secular power. 
When the monarch is Roman Catholic a 
bishopric may be in the royal gift, subject 
to papal approval. The bishop comes next 
in rank to the cardinal. His special insig¬ 
nia are the mitre and crosier or pastoral 
staff, a gold ring, the pallium, dalmatica, 



BISHOP-BISHOP-WEED. 


&c. He guards the purity of doctrine in 
his diocese, appoints professors in the cleri¬ 
cal colleges, licenses books on religious sub¬ 
jects, ordains and appoints the clergy, con¬ 
secrates churches, takes charge of the man¬ 
agement of funds for ecclesiastical or pious 
purposes, &c. The bishops of the Greek 
Church have similar functions but on the 
whole less authority. They are always 
selected from the monastic orders. 

In the Church of England bishops are 
nominated by the sovereign, who, upon re¬ 
quest of the dean and chapter for leave to 
elect a bishop, sends a conge cTelire, or 
license to elect, with a letter missive, nomi¬ 
nating the person whom he would have 
chosen. The election, by the chapter, must 
be made within twelve days, or the sovereign 
has a right to appoint whom he pleases. A 
bishop, as well as an archbishop, has his 
consistory court to hear ecclesiastical causes, 
and makes visits to the clergy, &c. He 
consecrates churches, ordains, admits, and 
institutes priests; confirms, suspends, excom¬ 
municates, grants licenses for marriage, &c. 
He has his archdeacon, dean, and chapter, 
chancellor, and vicar-general to assist him. 
In all the bishops of England now number 
thirty-three (several new bishoprics having 
been recently established), including the 
two metropolitans; and of these twenty-four 
sit in the House of Lords—the archbishops 
and the bishops of London, Durham, and 
Winchester by perpetual right, the others in 
order of seniority. In the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church of Ireland there are twelve 
bishops, including the metropolitans of Ar¬ 
magh and Clogherandof Dublin and Kildare. 
In the Scottish Episcopal Church there are 
seven bishops. There are also about eighty 
British colonial and missionary bishops be¬ 
longing to the Anglican Church. Of Roman 
Catholic bishops there are about 150 in the 
British dominions. In the U. States the 
Protestant Episcopal Church has over sixty 
bishops, the R. Catholic Church over seventy. 
In the States there are also the bishops of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, thirteen 
in number. 

Bishops in partihus infidelium (in parts 
occupied by the infidels), in the Roman 
Catholic Church, are bishops consecrated 
under the fiction that they are bishops in 
succession to those who were the actual 
bishops in places where Christianity has be¬ 
come extinct or almost so through the spread 
of Mohammedanism, as in Syria, Asia Minor, 
and the northern coast of Africa. Such titles 


are given to missionary bishops in countries 
imperfectly Christianized, and were formerly 
given to the Roman Catholic bishops in Bri¬ 
tain, the bishop of the northern district of 
Scotland, for instance, up to 1878 having 
the title of Bishop of Nicopolis. 

Suffragan bishops are bishops consecrated 
to assist other bishops in overtaking the 
duties of their dioceses, though any bishop 
is a suffragan in relation to his archbishop. 

Bishop, a beverage made by pouring hot 
or cold red wine upon the pulp and peel of 
oranges, and spicing and sugaring to taste. 
If white wine is employed it is known as 
Cardinal; if Tokay, it is termed Pope. 

Bishop, Sir Henry Rowley, musical 
composer, born in London in 1780, and 
trained under Bianchi, composer to the Lon¬ 
don Opera House. From 1809, when his 
first opera, the Circassian Bride, was pro¬ 
duced at Drury Lane, until his masque 
The Fortunate Isles, written to celebrate 
Queen Victoria’s marriage, he composed 
about a hundred works for the stage—among 
others the music of Guy Mannering, The 
Slave, The Miller and his Men, Maid Ma¬ 
rian, The Virgin of the Sun, Aladdin, Ham¬ 
let, versions of operas by Rossini, Meyer¬ 
beer and others, Waverley, Manfred, &c. 
From 1810 to 1824 he acted as musical 
composer and director to Co vent Garden 
Theatre. He also arranged several volumes 
of the National Melodies, and completed 
the arrangement of the music for Moore’s 
Irish Melodies, commenced by Stevenson. 
Shortly after the accession of Queen Victo¬ 
ria he was knighted. He was elected Reid 
professor of music in Edinburgh University 
in 1841, and in 1848 professor of music in 
the University of Oxford. He died in 
1855. 

Bishop-Auckland, a town, England, 
county Durham (giving name to a pari. div. 
of the co.); with cotton-factories and en¬ 
gineering works; and important coal-mines 
in the neighbourhood. The palace of the 
Bishop of Durham is here (whence the name). 
Pop. 1891, 10,527. 

Bishop Bamaby, the may-bug or lady¬ 
bird. 

Bishop’s Staff. See Crosier. 

Bishop-Stortford, a town of England, 
county Hertford, on the river Stort; trade 
chiefly in grain and malt. Pop. 6704. 

Bishop-Wearmouth. See Sunderland. 

Bishop-weed ( jEgopodium Podagraria ), 
an umbelliferous plant of Europe, with 
thrice-ternate leaves and creeping roots or 

504 


BISIGNANO-BISMUTH. 


underground stems, a great pest in gardens 
from its vigorous growth and the difficulty 
of getting rid of it: called also Gout-wort, 
Herb Gerard, &c. 

Bisignano (be-se-nya'-no), a town of S. 
Italy, province of Cosenza, the seat of a 
bishop and defended by a citadel. The place 
was thrown in ruins by an earthquake in 
Dec. 1887. 

Bis'kara, or Biskra, a town, Algeria, the 
chief military post of the Sahara, with an 
important caravanserai. Pop. 8000. 

Bismarck, capital of North Dakota. 
Pop. in 1890, 2260. 

> Bismarck Archipelago, the name given 
by the Germans to New Bi’itain, New Ire¬ 
land, and other islands adjoining their por¬ 
tion of New Guinea. 

Bismarck-Schonhausen (bis'mark-sheim'- 
hou-zen), Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince; 
born of a noble family of the ‘Mark’ (Bran¬ 
denburg), at Schonbausen, April 1, 1815; 



studied at Gottingen, Berlin, and Greifs- 
wald; entered the army and became lieuten¬ 
ant in the Landwehr. After a brief inter¬ 
val devoted to his estates and to the office 
of inspector of dikes, he became in 1846 a 
member of the provincial diet of Saxony, 
and in 1847 of the Prussian diet. In 1851 
he was appointed representative of Prussia 
in the diet of the German Federation at 
Frankfort, where with brief interruptions he 
remained till 1859, exhibiting the highest 
ability in his efforts to checkmate Austria 
and place Prussia at the head of the German 

505 


states. From 1859-62 he was ambassador 
at St. Petersburg, and in the latter year, 
after an embassy to Paris of five months’ 
duration, was appointed first minister of the 
Prussian crown. The Lower House persis¬ 
tently refusing to pass the bill for the reor¬ 
ganization of the army, Bismarck at once 
dissolved it (Oct. 1862), closing it for four 
successive sessions until the work of reorga¬ 
nization was complete. When popular .feel¬ 
ing had reached its most strained point the 
Schleswig-Holstein question acted as a diver¬ 
sion, and Bismarck—by the skilful manner 
in which he added the duchies to Prussian 
territory, checkmated Austria, and excluded 
her from the new German confederation, 
in which Prussia held the first place—became 
the most popular man in Germany. As 
chancellor and president of the Federal 
Council he secured the neutralization of 
Luxembourg in place of its cession by Hol¬ 
land to France; and though in 1868 he 
withdrew for a few months into private life, 
he resumed office before the close of the 
year. A struggle between Germany and 
France appearing to be sooner or later in¬ 
evitable, Bismarck, having made full prepa¬ 
rations, brought matters to a head on the 
question of the Hohenzollern candidature 
for the Spanish throne. Having carried the 
war to a successful issue, he became chan¬ 
cellor and prince of the new German empire. 
Subsequently, in 1872, he alienated the Ro¬ 
man Catholic party by promoting adverse 
legal measures and expelling the Jesuits. 
He then resigned his presidency for a year, 
though still continuing to advise the em¬ 
peror. Towards the close of 1873 he returned 
to power, retaining his position until in 
March 1890 he disagreed with the emperor 
and tendered his resignation. In 1878 he 
presided at the Berlin Congress, in 1880 at the 
Berlin Conference, and in 1884 at the Congo 
or Colonial Conference. He retired from 
the Chancellorship in 1889, and since has 
been attending to his private affairs. 

Bis'nmth, a metal of a yellowish or red¬ 
dish-white colour, and a lamellar texture. 
Chemical sym. Bi; atomic weight, 213; 
specific gravity, 9'8. It is somewhat harder 
than lead and not malleable, when cold 
being so brittle as to break easily under the 
hammer, so as to be reducible to powder. 
Its internal face or fracture exhibits large 
shining plates variously disposed. It fuses 
at 476 J Fahr., and expands considerably as 
it hardens. It is often found in a native 
state, crystallized in rhombs or octahedrons, 


BISON — 

or in the form of dendrites, or thin laminae 
investing the ores of other metals, particu¬ 
larly cobalt. Bismuth is used in the com¬ 
position of pewter, in the fabrication of 
printers’ types, and in various other metal¬ 
lic mixtures. Eight parts of bismuth, 5 of 
lead, and 3 of tin, constitute the fusible 
metal sometimes called Newton’s, from the 
discoverer, which melts at 202° Fahr., and 
may be fused over a candle in a piece of 
stiff paper without burning the paper. It 
forms the basis of a sympathetic ink; and a 
derivative from it is used in medicine. A 
special feature of interest is its diamagnetic 
property. The subnitrate or basic nitrate of 
bismuth is used as a paint and as a cos¬ 
metic, and is known as Pearl White or Pearl 
Powder. 

Bi'son, the name applied to two species 
of ox. One of these, the European bison or 
aurochs (Bos bison or Bison europceus), is 
now nearly extinct, being found only in the 



American Bison (Bison americanua). 


forests of Lithuania and the Caucasus. The 
other, or American bison, improperly termed 
buffalo (Bison americanus), is found only 
in the region lying north and south between 
the Great Slave Lake and the Yellowstone 
river, and in parts of Kansas and Texas, 
and is rapidly becoming extinct in the 
wild state, though formerly to be met with 
in immense herds. The two species closely 
resemble each other, the American bison, 
however, being for the most part smaller, 
and with shorter and weaker hind-quarters. 
The bison is remarkable for the great hump 
or projection over its fore-shoulders, at 
which point the adult male is almost six 
feet in height; and for the long, shaggy, 
rust-coloured hair over the head, neck, and 
fore-part of the body. In summer, from 
the shoulders backwards, the surface is 


- BISTRE. 

covered with a very short fine hair, smooth 
and soft as velvet. The tail is short and 
tufted at the end. The American bison 
used to be much hunted for sport as 
well as for its flesh and skin. Its flesh 
is rather coarser gi'ained than that of the 
domestic ox, but was considered by hunters 
and travellers as superior in tenderness and 
flavour. The hump is highly celebrated for 
its richness and delicacy. Their skins, 
especially that of the cow, dressed in the 
Indian fashion, with the hair on, make ad- 
mirable defences against the cold, and are 
known as buffalo robes; the wool has been 
manufactured into hats, and a coarse cloth. 
The American bison has been found to 
breed readily with the common ox, the 
issue being fertile among themselves. 

Bisque (bisk), a kind of unglazed white 
porcelain used for statuettes and ornaments. 

Bissa'gos, a group of about thirty islands 
near the w. coast of Africa, opposite the 
mouth of the Rio Grande, between lat. 10° 
and 12° N. The largest, Orango, is about 
25 miles in length, and most of them are 
inhabited by a rude negro race, with whom 
some trade is carried on. Most of the 
islands are under native chiefs nominally 
vassals of Portugal. At Bolama, or Bu- 
lama, once a British settlement, but aban¬ 
doned as unhealthy in 1793, there is a 
Portuguese town, a thriving and pleasant 
place, the seat of government for the Portu¬ 
guese possessions in this quarter. 

Bissen, Wilhem, a Danish sculptor, born 
in 1798, died in 1868. He studied at Rome 
under Thorwaldsen, who in his will ap¬ 
pointed Bissen to complete his unfinished 
works and take charge of his museum. 
Bissen’s own works include a classic frieze 
of several hundred feet for the palace-hall 
at Copenhagen, an Atalanta hunting, Cupid 
sharpening his arrows, &c. 

Bissex'tile. See Leap-year. 

Bis'tort (Polygonum Bistorta), a perennial 
plant of the buckwheat family (Polygo- 
naceae), found in Britain, and from its 
astringent properties (it contains much 
tannin) sometimes used medicinally. It 
bears a raceme of flesh-coloured flowers, 
and may be met with in gardens. It is 
also called adder’s-wort and snake-weed, 
from being a supposed l'emedy against 
snake bites. 

Bistoury (bis'tu-ri), a surgical implement 
for making incisions, of various forms. 

Bistre, or Bister, a warm brown pig¬ 
ment, a burned oil extracted from the soot 

506 








BISTRITZ-BITTER-ROOT. 


of wood, especially beech. It furnishes a 
fine transparent wash, but is chiefly em¬ 
ployed in the same fashion as sepia and 
indian ink for monochrome sketches. 

Bis'tritz, a town of Austria-Hungary, in 
Transylvania. Pop. 8063. 

Bisulnuggur, Bisulpur. See Bisal-. 

Bit, the part of a bridle which goes into 
the mouth of a horse, and to which the 
reins are attached.—Also one of the mov¬ 
able boring tools used by means of the car¬ 
penter’s brace. There is a great variety of 
forms, to which special names are given. 

Bithoor, Bithur (bit-hor'), or Bittoor, a 
town, India, N.W. Provinces, 12 miles N.w. 
of Cawnpore, on the Ganges, long the abode 
of a line of Mahratta chiefs, the last of 
whom died without issue in 1851. His 
adopted son, Nana Sahib, who claimed the 
succession, was the instigator of the massacre 
at Cawnpore. Pop. 6685. 

Bithyn'ia, an ancient territory in the 
N.W. of Asia Minor, on the Black Sea and 
Sea of Marmora, at one time an indepen¬ 
dent kingdom, latterly a Roman province. 
The cities of Chalcedon, Heraclea, Nico- 
media, Nicsea, and Prusa were in Bithynia. 
In the eleventh century it was conquered 
by the Seljuks, and in 1298 a new kingdom 
was founded there by the Ottoman Turks, 
of which, prior to the capture of Constanti¬ 
nople, Prusa (Broussa) was the capital. 

Bitlis. See Betlis. 

Biton'to, a town, Italy, province of Bari, 
the seat of a bishop, with a handsome ca¬ 
thedral. The environs produce excellent 
wine. Pop. 22,726. 

Bitsch (bich), a German town in the north 
of Alsace-Lorraine, in a pass of the Vosges, 
and having a strong citadel on a hill. Pop. 
8000. 

Bitter-almond, the bitter variety of 
Amygddlus communis, or common almond. 

Bitter-apple, a name applied to the Bitter- 
gourd. 

Bitter-ash, a tree, Sirnaruba amara, a 
native of the West Indies, the bark of 
which is used as a tonic. Others of the 
same genus have also the same name, S. 
excelsa of Jamaica having wood almost as 
bitter as quassia, and being called Jamaica 
quassia. 

Bit'terfeld (-felt), town in Prussian Sax¬ 
ony, on the Mulde, with manufactures of 
cloth, pottery, &c. Pop. 7596. 

Bitter-gourd, a plant, Citrullus Colo - 
cynthis, called also Colocynth (which see). 

Bitter-king, the Soulamea amara, a tree 
507 


of the quassia order peculiar to the Moluccas 
and Fiji Islands, the root and bark of which, 
bruised and macerated, are used in the East 
as an emetic and tonic. 

Bitter Lakes, salt lakes on the line of 
the Suez Canal. 

Bit'tern, the name of several grallatorial 
birds, family Ardeidse or herons, genus 
Botaurus. There are two British species, 
the common bittern ( Botaurus stellaris), 
and the little bittern (B. minutus), a native 
of the south, and only a summer visitor 
to Britain. Both, however, are becoming 
rare from the reclamation of the marshy 
grounds that form their favourite haunt. 
The common bittern is about 28 inches 
in length, about 44 in extent of wing; 
general colour, dull yellowish-brown, with 
spots and bars of black or dark brown; 
feathers on the breast long and loose; 
tail short; bill about 4 inches long. It 
is remarkable for its curious booming or 
bellowing cry, from which come the pro¬ 
vincial names of miredrum and butter - 
bump, &c. The eggs (greenish-brown) are 
four or five in number. The little bittern 
is not more than 15 inches in length. The 
American bittern {B. lentiginosus) has some 
resemblance to the common European bit¬ 
tern, but is smaller. 

Bit'tern, the syrupy residue from evapo¬ 
rated sea-water after the common salt has 
been taken out of it. It is used in the 
preparation of Epsom salt (sulphate of mag¬ 
nesia), of Glauber’s salt (sulphate of soda), 
and contains also chloride of magnesium, 
iodine, and bromine. 

Bitter-nut, a tree of N. America, of the 
walnut order, the Carya amara, or swamp- 
hickory, which produces small and some¬ 
what egg-shaped fruits, with a thin fleshy 
.rind; the kernel is bitter and uneatable. 

Bitter-root, Lewisia redivlva, a plant of 
Canada and part of the IT. States, order 
Mesembryacea?, so called from its root 
being bitter though edible, and indeed 
esteemed as an article of food by whites as 
well as Indians. From the root, which is 
long, fleshy, and tapering, grow clusters of 
succulent green leaves, with a fleshy stalk 
bearing a solitary rose-coloured flower rising- 
in the centre, and remaining open only in 
sunshine. Flower and leaves together, the 
plant appears above ground for only about 
six weeks.—Californian bitter-root ( Echino - 
cystis fabacea) and Natal bitter-root (Ger- 
rardanthus macrorhlza) both belong to the 
gourd family. 



BITTERS-BJORNSON. 


Bitters, a liquor (frequently spirituous!, 
in which bitter herbs or roots have been 
steeped. Gentian, quassia, angelica, bog- 
bean, chamomile, hops, centaury, &c., are 
all used for preparations of this kind. The 
well-known Angostura bitters have aromatic 
as well as bitter properties. Bitters are 
employed as stomachics, anthelmintics, &c. 

Bitter-salt, Epsom salt, sulphate of mag¬ 
nesia. 

Bitter-spar, rhomb-spar, the crystallized 
form of dolomite or magnesian limestone. 

Bitter-sweet, the w r oody nightshade, So¬ 
larium Dulcamara (see Nightshade). 

Bitter Vetch, a name applied to two kinds 
of leguminous plants: (a) Ervum ervilia, a 
lentil cultivated for fodder; and ( b) all the 
species of Orubus, e.g. the common bitter 
vetch of Britain, 0. tuberosus , a perennial 
herbaceous plant with racemes of purple 
flowers and sweet edible tubers. 

Bitter-wood, the timber of Xylopia glabra 
and other species of Xylopia , order Anon- 
acese, all noted for the extreme bitterness of 
the wood. The name is also given to other 
bitter trees, as the bitter-ash. 

Bitter-wort, yellow gentian (Gcntidna 
luted). 

Bitu'men, a mineral substance of a resi¬ 
nous natui’e, composed principally of hydro¬ 
gen and carbon, and appearing in a variety 
of forms which pass into each other and are 
known by different names, from naphtha , 
the most fluid, to petroleum and mineral tar , 
which are less so, thence to maltha or min¬ 
eral pitch, which is more or less cohesive, 
and lastly to asphaltum and elastic bitumen 
(or elaterite), which are solid. It burns like 
pitch, with much smoke and flame. It con¬ 
sists of 84 to 88 of carbon and 12 to 16 of 
hydrogen, and is found in the earth, occur¬ 
ring principally in the secondary, tertiary, 
and alluvial formations. It is a very widely 
spread mineral, and is now largely employed 
in various ways. As the binding substance 
in mastics and cements it is used for mak¬ 
ing roofs, arches, walls, cellar-floors, &c., 
water-tight, for street and other pavements, 
and in some of its forms for fuel and for 
illuminating purposes. The bricks of which 
the walls of Babylon were built are said to 
have been cemented with bitumen, which 
gave them unusual solidity. 

Bituminous Shale, or Schist, an argil¬ 
laceous shale impregnated with bitumen 
and very common in the coal-measures. It 
is largely worked for the production of 
paraffin, &c. 


Bit'zius, Albert, a popular Swiss author, 
better known by his pseudonym of Jere- 
mias Gotthelf, born 1797, died 1854. His 
chief works were his Scenes and Traditions 
of the Swiss, 1842-46; Grandmother Ivaty, 
1848; Uli the Farm-servant, and Uli the 
Farmer, 1850; Stories and Pictures of 
Popular Life in Switzerland, 1851. 

Bi'valves, molluscous animals having a 
shell consisting of two halves or valves 


Bivalve Shell. 

that open by an elastic hinge and are closed 
by muscles; as the oyster, mussel, cockle, 
&c. 

Bivouac (biv'-u-ak), the encampment of 
soldiers in the open air without tents, each 
remaining dressed and with his weapons at 
hand. It was the regular practice of the 
French revolutionary armies, but is only 
desirable where great celerity of move¬ 
ment is required. 

Bixa. See Arnotto. 

Bizer'ta, or Benzert, a seaport of Tunis, 
the most northern town of Africa, formerly 
one of the best ports in Tunis, though now 
only accessible to small vessels, at the en¬ 
trance of a narrow channel (5 miles long, 
1 broad) communicating with the Lake of 
Bizerta, a fine, deep, salt-water lagoon 
teeming with fish, inland from and con¬ 
nected with which is a fresh-water lake. 
The country around is beautiful and fertile. 
Pop., chiefly Arab, about 5000. 

Bjelbog (byeTbog), in Slavonic mythology 
the pale or white god, as opposed to Tcher- 
nibog, the black god, or god of darkness, 

Bjorneborg (byewr'ne-borg), a seaport of 
Finland in the Gulf of Bothnia. Pop. 
8718. 

Bjornson, Bjornstjerne (byeurn'styer- 
ne byewrn'son), Norwegian novelist, poet, 
and dramatist, born 1832. He entered the 
University of Christiania in 1852, and he 
speedily became known as a contributor of 
articles and stories to newspapers and as a 
dramatic critic. From 1857 to 1859 he was 
manager of the Bergen theatre, producing 

508 








BJORNSTJERNA- 

during that time his novel Arne, and his 
tragedy of Halte Hulda. He was at 
Christiania part-editor of the Aftenblad 
in 1860, then lived several years abroad, 
and in 1866 became editor of the Norsk 
Folkeblad. In 1869-72 he was co-director 
of a Copenhagen periodical, and much of 
his later life has been passed abroad. The 
democratic tendencies to be found in his 
novels have found a practical outcome in 
the active part taken by him in political 
questions bearing upon the Norwegian pea¬ 
santry and popular representation. Among 
his tales and novels, a number of which 
may be had in English, are: Synnoeve Sol- 
bakken; Arne; The Fishermaiden; A Happy 
Boy; Railways and Churchyards. Among 
his dramatic pieces are: The Newly-married 
Couple; Mary Stuart in Scotland; A Bank¬ 
ruptcy, &c. He has also written poems 
and songs. 

Bjornstjerna (byeurn'sher-na), Magnus 
Frederick Ferdinand, Count, Swedish 
statesman and author, born 1779, died 1847. 
Having entered the Swedish army and risen 
to be colonel, he went with the Swedish 
troops to Germany in 1813 and took part 
in the battles of Grossbeeren, Dennewitz, 
the passage of the Elbe, the storming of 
Dessau, and the battle of Leipzig. He also 
received the surrender of Liibeck and of 
Maestricht. After the capitulation of Paris 
he fought in Holstein and in Norway, at 
length concluding with Prince Christian 
Frederick at Moss the ^convention uniting 
Norway and Sweden. In 1826 he was 
made a count, and in 1828 plenipotentiary 
to Great Britain, where he continued till 
1846. He published works on British Rule 
in the East Indies, on the Theogony, Phi¬ 
losophy, and Cosmogony of the Hindus, 
&c. 

Black, the negation of all colour, the. 
opposite of white. There are several black 
pigments, such as ivory-black, made from 
burned ivory or bones; lamp-black, from the 
smoke of resinous substance; Spanish-black, 
or cork-black, from burned cork, &c. 

Black, John, author and editor, was the 
son of a Berwickshire shepherd, and born 
in 1783. After being employed in a lawyer’s 
office, first in Duns and then in Edinburgh, 
he removed in 1810 to London, where he 
became engaged as parliamentary reporter 
for the Morning Chronicle, ultimately rising 
to be its editor. He retired in 1843 and died 
in 1855. 

Black, Jeremiah S., born at The Glades, 
509 


— BLACK ACTS. 

Pa., 1810, died at York, Pa., 1883; a cele¬ 
brated lawyer; in 1860 was Secretary of 
State in Mr. Buchanan’s Cabinet. 

Black, Joseph, a distinguished chemist, 
born at Bordeaux, of Scottish parents, in 
1728; entered Glasgow University and 
studied chemistry under Dr. Cullen. In 
1754 he was made Doctor of Medicine at 
Edinburgh, his thesis being on the nature 
of the causticity of lime and the alkalies, 
which he demonstrated to be due to the 
absence of the carbonic acid present in lime¬ 
stone, &c. In 1756 he extended and repub¬ 
lished this thesis, and was appointed pro¬ 
fessor of medicine and lecturer on chemistry 
at Glasgow in succession to Dr. Cullen, 
whom he succeeded also in the Edinburgh 
chair in 1766. The discovery of carbonic 
acid is of interest not only as having pre¬ 
ceded that of the other gases made by 
Priestley, Cavendish, and others, but as 
having preceded in its method the explana¬ 
tion given by Lavoisier of the part played 
by oxygen in combustion. His fame, how¬ 
ever, chiefly rests on his theory of ‘latent 
heat,’ 1757 to 1763. He died in 1799. 

Black, William, novelist, born in Glas¬ 
gow in 1841, first studied art, but eventu¬ 
ally became connected with the Glasgow 
press. In 1864 he went to London, and in 
the following year joined the staff of the 
Morning Star, for which he was special 
correspondent during the Franco-Austrian 
war of 1866. His first novel, Love or Mar¬ 
riage, 1867, was only moderately successful, 
but his In Silk Attire, Kilmeny, the Mon¬ 
arch of Mincing Lane, and especially A 
Daughter of Heth (1871), gained him an 
increasingly wide circle of readers. For 
four or five years he was assistant-editor 
of the Daily News, but his success in fiction 
led him to cease connection with journalism. 
His later works are The Strange Adventures 
of a Phaeton (1872), A Princess of Thule 
(1873), The Maid of Killeena, &c. (1874), 
Three Feathers (1875), Madcap Violet 
(1876), Green Pastures and Piccadilly 
(1877), Macleod of Dare (1878), White 
Wings (1880), Sunrise (1881), The Beau¬ 
tiful Wretch (1882), Shandon Bells (1883), 
Yolande, Judith Shakespeare, The Strange 
Adventures of a House-boat, &c. 

Black Acts, the acts of the Scottish par¬ 
liaments of the Jameses I.-V., of Queen 
Mary, and of James VI.; so called from 
their being printed in black-letter. 

In English law, the act passed under 
George I. with reference to the ‘Blacks,’ a 



BLACKADDER■ 

body of armed deer-stealers, &c., who in¬ 
fested Epping Forest. 

Black'adder, J ohn, a Scottish Covenanter, 
born in 1615. Having been obliged to 
demit his charge at Troqueer in favour of 
an Episcopal incumbent, be went with his 
wife and family to Caitloch, in the parish 
of Glencairn, and became one of the most 
popular of the itinerant preachers, success¬ 
fully eluding the numerous warrants issued 
against him. In 1674 he was outlawed and 
a large reward offered for his body. In 
1678 he went to Holland, and again in 1680, 
but on his return to Edinburgh in 1681 he 
was apprehended and imprisoned upon the 
Bass, where he died in 1685. 

Black Art. See Magic. 

Black-band, a valuable kind of clay iron¬ 
stone occurring in beds in the coal-mea¬ 
sures, and containing 10 or 15 or even 30 
per cent of coaly matter. Most of the 
Scotch iron is obtained from it. 

Black-beer, a kind of beer»of a black 
colour and syrupy consistence made at 
Dantzic. 

Black-beetle, a popular name for the 
cockroach. See also Blapsidce. 

Black'berry, a popular name of the 
bramble-berry or the plant itself. 

Black'bird (Tardus merula), called also 
the merle, a well-known species of thrush, 
common in Britain and throughout Europe. 
It is larger than the common thrush, its 
length being about 11 inches. The colour 
of the male is a uniform deep black, the bill 
being an orange-yellow; the female is of a 
brown colour, with blackish-brown bill. 
The nest is usually in a thick bush, and is 
built of grass, roots, twigs, &c., strengthened 
with clay. The eggs, generally four or five 
in number, are of a greenish-blue, spotted 
with various shades of brown. The song is 
rich, mellow, and fiute-like, but of no great 
variety or compass. Its food is insects, 
worms, snails, fruits, &c. The blackbirds 
or crow-blackbirds of America are quite 
different from the European blackbird, and 
are more nearly allied to the starlings and 
crows. See Crow - blackbird. The red¬ 
winged blackbird (Agelaius phceniceus), be¬ 
longing to the starling family, is a familiar 
American bird that congregates in great 
flocks. 

Black-boy, a name for the grass-trees 
(Xauthor rhoea) of Australia yielding a gum 
or resin called black-boy resin or akaroid 
resin. 

Black'burmanufacturing town and 


— BLACKFISH. 

parliamentary borough of England, Lanca¬ 
shire, 21 miles n.n.w. from Manchester. It 
is pleasantly situated in a sheltered valley, 
and has rapidly improved since 1850, the 
town-hall, exchange, and other buildings 
being of recent erection. It has a free gram¬ 
mar-school, founded by Queen Elizabeth in 
1557, a free school for girls, founded in 
1765, and many other public schools; and a 
free library, a public park of 50 acres; &c. 
Blackburn is one of the chief seats of the 
cotton manufacture, there being upwards of 
140 mills as well as works for making 
cotton machinery and steam-engines. The 
cottons made in the town and vicinity 
have an annual value of about £5,000,000. 
Returns two members to Parliament. Pop. 
1891, 120,064. 

Black-cap (Sylvia atricapilla ), a Euro¬ 
pean passerine bird of the warbler family, 
6 inches long, upper part of the head black, 
upper parts of the body dark gray with a 
greenish tinge, under parts more or less sil¬ 
very white. The female has its hood of a 
dull rust colour. The black-cap is met with 
in England from April to September. Its 
nest is built near the ground; the eggs, from 
five to six, are reddish-brown, mottled with 
a deeper colour. It ranks next to the night¬ 
ingale for sweetness of song. The American 
black-cap is a species of tit mouse (Parus 
atricapillus), so called from the colouring 
of the head. 

Black Chalk, a soft variety of argillaceous 
slate, containing 10 to 15 per cent of carbon, 
and used for drawing. 

Black Cock, the heath-cock, the male of 
the black-grouse. See Grouse. 

Black Country, a popular name for the 
district of coal-mines and iron-works in 
South Staffordshire, and extending into 
Warwick and Worcestershire. 

Black Death. See Plague. 

Black Draught, sulphate of magnesia 
and infusion of senna, with aromatics to 
make it palatable. 

Blackfeet Indians, a tribe of American 
Indians, partly inhabiting the U. States, 
partly Canada, from the Yellowstone to 
Hudson’s Bay. 

Blackfish (Tautfiga americana), a fish 
caught on the American coast, especially in 
the vicinity of Long Island, whence large 
supplies are obtained for the New York 
market. Its back and sides are of a bluish 
or crow black; the under parts, especially 
in the males, are w'hite. It is plump in 
appearance, and much esteemed for the 

510 



BLACK FLY-BLACKLOCK. 


table, varying in size from 2 to 12 lbs. 
Another fish, the CentrolSphus morio, found 
in the Mediterranean and on the coasts of 
Western Europe, is also called blackfish. 
It belongs to the mackerel family. In Scot¬ 
land the term is applied to foul or newly- 
spawned fish. In America two species of 
small whale of the genus Globiocephdlus 
also get this name. 

Black Fly, the name of two flies (Simu- 
Hum molestum and S. noclvum) whose bite 
is very troublesome to man and beast in the 
Northern United States and Canada. 

Black Forest (German, Schwarzwald), a 
chain of European mountains in Baden and 
Wiirtemberg, running almost parallel with 
the Rhine for about 85 miles. The Danube, 
Neckar, Kinzig, and other streams rise in 
the Black Forest, which is rather a chain 
of elevated plains than of isolated peaks; 
highest summit, Feldberg, 4900 feet. 
The skeleton of the chain is granite, its 
higher points covered with sandstone. 
The principal mineral is iron, and there are 
numerous mineral springs. The forests are 
extensive, chiefly of pines and similar spe¬ 
cies, and yield much timber. The manufac¬ 
ture of wooden clocks, toys, &c., is the most 
important industry, employing about 40,000 
persons. The inhabitants of the forest are 
quaint and simple in their habits, and the 
whole district preserves its old legendary 
associations. 

Black Friars, friars of the Dominican 
order: so called from their habit. 

Black Gum (Nyssa multiflora, order Cor- 
nacese), an American tree, yielding a close- 
grained, useful wood; fruit a drupe of blue- 
black colour, whence it seems to get its 
name of ‘black’: it has no gum about it. 
It is called also pepperidge, and has been 
introduced into Europe as an ornamental 
tree. 

Blackheath, a village and heath, Eng¬ 
land, Kent, about 6 miles s.e. of London 
Bridge. The heath contains about 70 acres 
within its present limits, and ie much re¬ 
sorted to by pleasure parties. It has been 
the scene of many remarkable events, such 
as the insurrectionary gatherings of Wat 
Tyler and Jack Cade and the exploits of 
various highwaymen. 

Black Hills, a hilly region of the United 
States in South Dakota and N. E. Wyom¬ 
ing, rising to the height of 6700 ft., rich in 
timber, but especially in gold, as well as 
other minerals. 

Black Hole of Calcutta, a small chamber, 
511 


20 feet square, in the old fort of Calcutta, 
in which, after their capture by Surajah 
Dowlah, the whole garrison of 146 men 
were confined during the night of June 21st, 
1756. Only twenty-three survived. The 
spot is now marked by a monument. 

Blackie, John Stuart, Scottish writer, 
long professor of Greek in the University 
of Edinburgh; born at Glasgow in 1809; 
educated at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Gottin¬ 
gen, and Berlin. He passed as advocate 
at the Edinburgh bar in 1834, in which 
year appeared his metrical translation of 
Faust. In 1841 he was appointed to the 
chair of Latin literature in Marischal Col¬ 
lege, Aberdeen—a post held by him until 
his appointment to the Greek chair at 
Edinburgh in 1852, from which he retired 
in 1882. Both in writing and upon the plat¬ 
form his name has been associated with va¬ 
rious educational, social, and political move¬ 
ments. Among his more important works 
are his Metrical Translation of HUschylus 
(1850); Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece, 
&c. (1857); . Discourse on Beauty (1860); 
Lyrical Poems (1860); Metrical Version of 
the Iliad (1866); Musa Burschicosa (1869); 
Four Phases of Morals (1871); Self-culture 
(1873); The Wise Men of Greece (1877); 
Natural History of Atheism (1877); £iay 
Sermons (1881); and Altavona, Fact and 
Fiction from My Life in the Highlands 
(1882). 

Blacking, for boots and shoes, &c., usually 
contains for its principal ingredients oil, vine¬ 
gar, ivory or bone black, sugar or molasses, 
strong sulphuric acid, and sometimes caout¬ 
chouc and gum-arabic. It is used either 
liquid or in the form of paste, the only differ¬ 
ence being that in making the paste a por¬ 
tion of the vinegar is withheld. 

Black-jack. See Blende. 

Black Lead. See Graphite. 

Black-letter, the name commonly given 
to the Gothic characters which began to 
supersede the Roman characters in the writ¬ 
ings of Western Europe towards the close of 
the twelfth century. The first types were 
in black-letter, but these wei’e gradually 
modified in Italy until they took the later 
Roman shape introduced into most European 
states during the sixteenth century. 

Black List, a list of bankrupts or other 
parties whose names are officially known as 
failing to meet pecuniary engagements. 

Black'lock, Thomas, a Scottish poet, 
born at Annan in 1721. At the age of six 
months he lost his sight by small-pox; and 




BLACK-MAIL 


BLACK PRINCE. 


as he grew up, his father, who was a brick¬ 
layer, and other friends, read to him the 
English classics. At the age of nineteen he 
lost his father, and was supported by Dr. 
Stephenson, a physician in Edinburgh, who 
sent him to school and to the university. 
In 1746 he brought out a volume of poems, 
and soon gained a wide circle of friends, 
amongst whom were David Hume and 
Joseph Spence, who wrote an account of 
his life, prefixed to the third edition of his 
poems in 1756. After passing through the 
usual theological course he was licensed in 
1759; he married in 1762; and was soon 
after appointed minister of Kirkcudbright. 
Being opposed by his parishioners, he re¬ 
signed his living, and retired to Edinburgh, 
where he received students of the university 
as boarders, and assisted them in their studies. 
In 1766 he was created D. D. Died 1791. 

Black-mail, a certain rate of money, 
corn, cattle, or the like, anciently paid, in 
the north of England and in Scotland, to 
certain men who were allied to robbers, to 
be protected by them from pillage. It was 
carried to such an extent as to become the 
subject of legislation. Blaok-mail was 
levied in the districts bordering the High¬ 
lands of Scotland till the middle of the 
eighteenth century. In the United States, 
money extorted from persons under threat 
of exposure in print for an alleged otfence; 
hush-money. 

Black'more, Sir Richard, physician and 
writer in verse and prose, the son of an at¬ 
torney in the county of Wilts; entered the 
University of Oxford in 1668; became a 
schoolmaster; then travelled on the Con¬ 
tinent, took the degree of M.D. at Padua, 
and w r as admitted Fellow of the Royal 
College of Physicians in 1687. In 1695 
he published his heroic poem Prince Arthur, 
and two years later was knighted and ap¬ 
pointed physician to William III. A pon¬ 
derously worthy man, though very middling 
poet, he became the common butt of the 
day, no amount of ridicule, however, being 


sufficient to restrain his desire for literary 
distinction. His Paraphrases on Job (1700) 
was followed by Eliza, an Epic in Ten 
Books (1705) and by the Nature of Man 
(1711). His poem the Creation (1712) 
received the praise of Addison and Johnson; 
but his Redemption, in six books (1722), 
and his Alfred, in twelve (1723), reverted 
to the unrelieved monotony of his earlier 
style. He left several prose works on 
theology and medicine, and died in 1729. 

Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, nov¬ 
elist, born at Longworth, Berkshire, 1825; 
educated at Tiverton School and Exeter 
College, Oxford, where he graduated in 
1847. In 1852 he was called to the bar 
at the Middle Temple, and afterwards 
practised as a conveyancer. His greatest 
success was Lorna Doone, a Romance of 
Exmoor (1869), one of the best of modern 
romances. Other novels by him are: 
Clara Vaughan (1864); Cradock Nowell, a 
Tale of the New Forest (1866); The Maid 
of Sker (1872); Alice Lorraine, a Tale of 
the South Downs (1875); Cripps the Car¬ 
rier (1876); Erema (1877); Mary Anerley 
(1880); Cliristowell (1882); and Sir Thomas 
Upmore (1884). He has also published a 
translation of Virgil’s Georgies (1862 and 
1871). 

Black Mountains, the group which con¬ 
tains the highest summits of the Appala¬ 
chian system, Clingman’s Peak being 6701 
ft., Guyot’s Peak 6661. See Appalachian 
Mountains. 

Blackpool, a much-frequented watering- 
place of England, on the coast of Lanca¬ 
shire, between the estuaries of the Ribble 
and Wyre. It consists of lofty houses rang¬ 
ing along the shore for about 3 miles, with 
an excellent promenade and carriage-drive; 
has libraries and news-rooms, two handsome 
promenade-piers, a large aquarium, fine win¬ 
ter-gardens, &c. It gives name to a pari, 
div. of the county. Pop. 1891, 23,846. 

Black Prince, the son of Edward III. 
See Eduard. 

512 




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